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Jeff Spurgeon: In New York City, there are lots of ways to get to Carnegie Hall. A subway, a taxi, a walk down 57th Street. You have just found another way to get to America's most famous home for classical music. Welcome to Carnegie Hall Live, the broadcast series that gives you a front row seat to concerts by some of the greatest artists in the world, and you hear the performances exactly as they happen. You are part of the audience sharing the experience of music making at Carnegie Hall.
Backstage at Carnegie Hall, I'm Jeff Spurgeon, and by my side is John Schaefer.
John Schaefer: And we are certainly not alone, as you can perhaps already tell, surrounded by members of one of the world's great orchestras. Officially, the Berliner Philharmoniker. The Berlin Philharmonic to you. And they have brought with them tonight one piece, one enormous, beefy piece, Anton Bruckner's Symphony No. 5. Bruckner known for building these huge sonic architectures, almost Wagnerian in scale. And this one clocks in at a whopping 80 minutes. And Jeff, we're going to get to hear it played by, as I say, one of the great orchestras in the world.
Jeff Spurgeon: For sure.
John Schaefer: An experience that Bruckner himself never had.
Jeff Spurgeon: Only got to hear it in a two-piano arrangement in his lifetime.
This is an orchestra with a storied history indeed, founded in 1882, and they've worked with some of the greatest names in the musical world, and certainly in the 20th century. There was hardly a greater name than that of Herbert von Karajan, who led the first U. S. tour of this orchestra, and therefore brought the orchestra for the first time here to Carnegie Hall.
John Schaefer: Now, tonight, the orchestra is led by its current Chief Conductor and Artistic Director. That's Kirill Petrenko. He's been with the Berlin Philharmonic since 2019. Both the orchestra and Petrenko have spent quite a bit of time with this Bruckner Symphony, the Symphony No. 5. They've been rehearsing it since August, and performed it in Salzburg, Lucerne, London, and now, tonight, here in New York, in the second of three concerts that they're doing at Carnegie Hall this week.
Jeff Spurgeon: But the orchestra is not new to this hall. As we say, they first came here with Karajan in 1955, and they've done 80 performances in Carnegie Hall since then.
This is Kirill Petrenko's second U. S. tour since he became Chief Conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic. Petrenko has talked about this Bruckner 5 that we're going to hear. He says it's where the composer really rediscovered his self confidence. At the time he wrote it Bruckner was living in Vienna. His career wasn't going particularly well. Financially, things were not great. And all this was weighing on him as he was writing this Symphony No. 5.
John Schaefer: And yet, it was out of that kind of darker period that he created what he called, his contrapuntal masterpiece. Now, to learn more about Bruckner and this symphony, we reached out to Benjamin Korstvedt, who is the Jebsen Professor of Music at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, and a world recognized Bruckner scholar, and we asked him if it's true that this symphony is somehow the most Brucknerian of the Bruckner symphonies.
Benjamin Korstvedt: In some ways, I think it's his symphony in which he wrote it most purely based on his own personal vision. The fourth symphony, which immediately preceded it, was one where he was clearly trying to write a symphony that would be relatable, that listeners could find engaging and easily comprehensible. But with the fifth symphony, it's a, in a certain way, it's a very abstract piece of music, or an uncompromising piece of music. And I think something that's really significant here is that Bruckner wrote it just at the time that he finally succeeded in obtaining a position at the University of Vienna as a professor of counterpoint and harmony. And there's a sense in which this symphony is his statement of his mastery of harmony and counterpoint. It's, in a sense, it's a very learned piece of music, but combined with a strong, dramatic, and expressive sensibility as well.
Jeff Spurgeon: That's Benjamin Korstvedt, Bruckner scholar and author. In fact, he just published a book on the fourth symphony called The Biography of a Symphony. It's from Oxford University Press.
We also caught up with the Berlin Philharmonic Concertmaster. Well, one of their three first concertmasters, Noah Bendix-Balgley, who says that he's spent a lot more time learning Bruckner symphonies since joining this orchestra a decade ago. As a musician, he told us there are some challenges to these very dense pieces.
Noah Bendix-Balgley: I think of these symphonies, they're really huge structures and the question of pacing, you know, he builds up these forms and, and especially in number five, it's like, you know, the whole symphony is, is a sort of a buildup to this incredible climax at the end after an hour, almost an hour and a half of music. And so that's a huge challenge as an interpreter for an orchestra and for a conductor to make that work. And that's the case I think with most of the Bruckner symphonies is that the sense of pacing and both dynamically and also in terms of tempi and energy has to be done so well so that when that amazing climax comes the whole, you know, heavens open up. It's really, it's been building up to that in an organic way.
Jeff Spurgeon: That's Berlin Philharmonic Concertmaster Noah Bendix-Balgley, who, if you can't tell from his accent isn't terribly Austrian or German sounding. He's originally from Asheville, North Carolina. He won't be in the first chair tonight. One of his colleagues will be concertmaster on this program, Daishin Kashimoto.
John Schaefer: And of course the concertmaster has an important role, they kind of lead the string ensemble, they help tune the orchestra at the beginning of the show, but it's the conductor, in this case Kirill Petrenko, who has the real role of keeping this ship on course. And as we mentioned, Petrenko has been leading this orchestra full time since 2019.
Noah Bendix-Balgley: He's an amazing conductor. conductor and musician. I mean, the, the seriousness that he has in his preparation and his approach to the score is, is wonderful. And, you know, the score is really for him, the absolute priority is getting every single detail that the composer puts in there to be heard in the concert hall. And so we spend a lot of time in rehearsals on really small details of dynamics, articulation, balance. And one thing that I really appreciate is that you know, we, we get very detailed in those rehearsals, but then when we get to the concert, once we've, we've done all of that work, he really lets loose and is giving everything in the concert in terms of his energy and inspiration and also spontaneity. You know, he's, hopefully we're able to, in the moment, do something differently or react to a particular solo from, from an individual and then we go in a different direction and the concert experience is something that's unique that's, you know, only the people who are that day in the concert hall playing or listening experience that. It's not a replica of a recording and we're not trying to replicate every single time the same concert.
Jeff Spurgeon: Once again, that was Concertmaster Noah Bendix-Balgley. We're just a couple of minutes away from the music. There's no late seating for this program at Carnegie Hall. So we're telling you all about the work before most of the orchestra even goes on stage. That's why you're hearing them warming up backstage where John and I are now. But we are going to hear this symphony very soon.
Anton Bruckner was planted solidly in the 19th century, born 200 years ago this year, September of 1824. He died at the end of that century, in 1896. His influences included Bach and Palestrina, members of the First Viennese School, and a great deal has been written about his relationship with Wagner.
We asked scholar Benjamin Korstvedt who Bruckner would go on to influence.
Benjamin Korstvedt: In some ways he didn't have direct successors. With the interesting partial exception of Gustav Mahler, who was a close friend of Bruckner during his teenage years as a student in Vienna and in some ways learned a great deal from, from Bruckner. Although later in his life, he, turned against Bruckner's music in some ways and was quite critical of it.
Another composer who was influenced by Bruckner was Sibelius, who also as a student heard Bruckner's Third Symphony and was very strongly impressed by it. And I think there are some, some aspects of Sibelius's style that might have been influenced by the experience of Bruckner's music.
John Schaefer: That is author Benjamin Korstvedt, who is part, Jeff, of a list of editors of Bruckner's symphonies. Of course, you mentioned the book he wrote about the Fourth Symphony. He's also done a performing edition of that piece. And here's something for the Bruckner fans listening. When you say this orchestra is playing that Bruckner symphony, a real Bruckner fan's first question will usually be, well, what edition is it? You know, because the Haas edition and the Novak edition can be very, very different pieces and very different experiences. The Symphony No. 5 might be an exception. Kirill Petrenko has chosen the original version from 1878. And apparently, there's very little to, to, to sort of distinguish between the original version, the Haas version, and the Novak version. So there's no controversy here.
Jeff Spurgeon: And that means that there is much more up to the interpreter, which is the conductor. And the last movement of this piece it's where things get, well, where it perhaps offers the interpreter, the conductor, the most leeway or the most possibility for a kind of personal expression in the build up to that great climax that concludes this work.
John Schaefer: Which is why the architecture of the piece is so important, because you don't want that grand climax to appear out of nowhere. It needs to feel inevitable. The rousing conclusion of an 80-minute journey through Anton Bruckner's Symphony No. 5.
Jeff Spurgeon: Now the stage doors have opened, and the Berliner Philharmoniker is walking onto the stage of Carnegie Hall. You hear the audience applauding. We've heard some amazing sounds just from the warm ups backstage, and seen some incredible individuals who we know for their individual concert work. Flutist Emmanuel Pahud was a couple of feet to your left, John, and the oboist Albrecht Mayer chatted with us a couple of moments before the broadcast began. So this is an orchestra filled with virtuosos getting ready now to bring us this great big piece of Bruckner music.
John Schaefer: I, I think sometimes listeners don't necessarily appreciate the athleticism involved in being a world class musician. And in a piece like this, that athleticism absolutely is essential and becomes a key part of the performance, because it is a single work, and the strings especially, they're added pretty much from beginning to end, and they need to save something for that final sprint to the finish line at the end of what can feel like a marathon performance. The Symphony No. 5, about 80 minutes in length, no matter which edition of it you're playing. And we will hear Kirill Petrenko's performance of it with the Berlin Philharmonic here on stage at Carnegie Hall.
The orchestra is settled, and now...
Jeff Spurgeon: We're waiting for our concertmaster to appear. And our conductor is at hand as well.
And so the stage door opens. And out goes Daishin Kashimoto, who is one of the three first concertmasters of the Berlin Philharmonic. He'll be in the first chair tonight, so he'll tune the orchestra up. We were talking about the endurance the strings have to have. I think one of the great ways to think about Bruckner's symphonies is to remember that he was an organist, and so there is so much of the power, the sudden bursts of sound, the sudden reductions in sound that you can accomplish on a pipe organ, which was an instrument that Bruckner played throughout his lifetime in a number of churches, and he was a famed improviser on the instrument. It doesn't tell all of how Bruckner thought of music, but it's a great way to think about it from, from one perspective. That organ sound is just in his music all the way through.
John Schaefer: And, and, that is just one perspective, the musical one, then there is the spiritual perspective, which comes from his deep Catholic faith. He was born in Upper Austria, rural part of that country.
Jeff Spurgeon: Never lost that connection.
John Schaefer: Yeah, that, that spiritual element of his symphonies, that really is what guides you through this 80-minute sonic journey that we are about to embark on. Kirill Petrenko, out at center stage here at Carnegie Hall. Ascending the podium, a bow to the audience, turns to the Berlin Philharmonic, and we will now hear Bruckner's Symphony No. 5 from Carnegie Hall Live.
MUSIC – BRUCKNER SYMPHONY NO. 5
John Schaefer: Music by Anton Bruckner, his Symphony No. 5 in B flat major, played live at Carnegie Hall by the Berlin Philharmonic. Their chief conductor and artistic director Kirill Petrenko leading that mammoth performance, which, as you can hear, has resulted in a mammoth round of applause here at Carnegie Hall.
I'm John Schaefer, alongside Jeff Spurgeon. And for a program that has a single work on it, Jeff, this is a program that I think will leave everybody pretty satisfied.
Jeff Spurgeon: There is a great deal that happens, but the thing with Bruckner is, almost none of it happens quickly. So the themes are drawn out. The arc of the, of the work is a long one. And yeah, you're right. There are so many thrilling moments in a work like this. I love what Janet E. Bedell, the annotator for this concert, wrote. She said, to enter into the world of a Bruckner symphony, especially the fifth, listeners must readjust their 21st century internal clocks.
Inspired by Wagner, Bruckner conceived his symphonic movements on a very broad scale. And so, this breadth of, of movement, it, there's always something happening, but the progress is yet at the same time slow.
John Schaefer: Yeah.
Jeff Spurgeon: And, and it's a different experience, but a very rich one, a very rich one.
John Schaefer: Well, and it's, it's also an experience that is full of echoes and allusions to things that you've heard before. The very end of the piece, there's that little motif from the big melody of the first movement brought back. And, you know, that sort of thing yeah, when we talk about Bruckner symphonies, we often talk about the architecture of the piece. And he really built these sonic cathedrals, this deeply religious man from rural Austria who found himself living in cosmopolitan Vienna and being the proverbial square peg in a round hole and yet found that the, the time and the inspiration to create these symphonies.
The Symphony No. 5 is the one that we've heard here in this Carnegie Hall Live performance and a standing ovation from the audience here as Maestro Kirill Petrenko heads back out on stage to take another bow.
Jeff Spurgeon: Those cheers are for him that you heard, and previously he was pointing to various section leaders in the orchestra. Almost every instrument has a an amazing series of solos in this work. There's a wonderful effect of the violins, part one section of them plucking, another playing legato lines, an effect you don't hear all the time. Bruckner uses it very effectively again and again in this work, and the thrilling precision of this Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra's brass section, when they come in, I'll say it again, you hear that Bruckner was an organist, and he knew how to press all the keys at once.
John Schaefer: Pulling out all the stops, as they say.
Jeff Spurgeon: And certainly that as well. And so you get this massive wall of sound. But that's not all that there is in Bruckner because there are marvelously delicate and, and light moments in this work as well.
Now the entire Berliner Philharmoniker on its feet here at Carnegie Hall with its music director and chief conductor, Kirill Petrenko, acknowledging the applause of this Carnegie Hall audience after a performance of the Symphony No. 5 of Anton Bruckner.
John Schaefer: I don't know if you noticed, Jeff but one of the times that Kirill Petrenko came offstage and was standing in front of us as, as we mentioned that there was a rousing reaction from the audience, he turned and grinned at us. He seems pretty happy. [Yes] with the performance [Yes] that he and the Berlin Philharmonic have just given us this evening.
Jeff Spurgeon: There's certainly a twinkle in his eye as he passes us to no doubt be greeting some members of the public after an 80-minute performance of this Symphony No. 5 of Bruckner.
And we're going to be talking to a member or two of the orchestra at the conclusion of this performance as well in just a moment.
John Schaefer: This is Classical New York, WQXR, 105. 9 FM in HD Newark, 90. 3 FM WQXW Ossining, and WNYC FM HD2 New York.
Carnegie Hall Live bringing you this, this sterling orchestra from Berlin here in New York. Always a major event when the Berlin Philharmonic joins us. And joining us at the moment is one of the orchestra's several concertmasters, the American born Noah Bendix-Balgley.
Noah.
Jeff Spurgeon: Congratulations on the performance.
Noah Bendix-Balgley: Thank you.
Jeff Spurgeon: Is it nice to get the feeling back in your legs after being in the chair for a while?
Noah Bendix-Balgley: More the feeling in your hands after the last two pages of fortississimo tremolo. And you want to save something, but somehow you just have to go for it. Then suddenly you can't feel your hand anymore.
John Schaefer: Well, you know, we were talking before the performance began about the athleticism. That musicians are, as the late Leon Fleischer called them, fine muscle athletes, but there's some big muscle activity going on.
Noah Bendix-Balgley: There's some big lifting at the important moments of a symphony like this for everybody involved.
John Schaefer: So how do you, do you have to pace yourself over the course of a journey like this?
Noah Bendix-Balgley: I mean, yes and no, but of course in the concert you really want to give everything. You don't want to leave anything, as they say, in reserve. So, so, yes, you pace yourself and try to make sure that when you get to the end, the big climax of the symphony, which is just majestic, you have some energy and then of course the adrenaline kicks in at the end and you just go for it.
Jeff Spurgeon: All your colleagues help lift you up into that.
Noah Bendix-Balgley: Yeah, yeah, I mean you look around and you see everybody giving every single ounce of energy and using an entire bow and every stroke and so there's nothing else you can do.
Jeff Spurgeon: You and your co concert master appeared, it looked like the two of you were having a good time together out there. Tonight I, I, perhaps I was misreading but I noticed some facial expressions between the two of you.
Noah Bendix-Balgley: Yeah, yeah, I mean, of course, of course, it's really very much fun to play in this orchestra, and we have our little inside jokes, and you know, give each other a little nod when somebody makes a nice fingering or a new discovery or something.
Jeff Spurgeon: You've talked about taking a long time in your ten years now with the Berlin Philharmonic of spending time with these symphonies and becoming more familiar with them. Bruckner's a hard, Bruckner's a hard composer for lots of people. One of the things I carried into this concert with me tonight was a grudge against the New York Times for a series of articles over the past few years saying, "Bruckner, again? Why?" And partly that's the headline writers, but partly it's the critics, too. Did you have to become a little convinced to appreciate this composer?
Noah Bendix-Balgley: You know, it's something I play more and more over the years. Previously, I played in an American orchestra in the Pittsburgh Symphony. We did some Bruckner with the Austrian music director there, Manfred Honeck. So I had some familiar, sort of the famous ones, and I've gotten to know the less famous ones over the years, especially in this special 200th anniversary Bruckner year. But it's really its own world, you know, own symphonic world. Sort of time scale too, and that's one of the wonderful things is the, I always find you know, of course we rehearse these symphonies intensively and try to plan everything out and you know our all the details and every little thing, but then once you get into it, when you're playing it, it's really, it's an experience. It's sort of in many ways feels sort of like a bigger than life cinematic experience. And I really imagine these things architecturally, especially a work like this, that is so contrapuntal and has these motives that keep coming back in different ways and have built up and up and up over the course of this almost hour and a half. And yeah, you really, you really feel this is a majestic building a cathedral, a world, a landscape, you know, a bigger than life statement and that's that's I think what he was going for. So hopefully we can transmit that across to the audience and the listeners.
Jeff Spurgeon: You do need those superlatives to describe this music. How long does it take the orchestra to adjust to Carnegie Hall?
Noah Bendix-Balgley: Well, you know, we, we play here often, every couple of years and it's always a joy. This is really a special hall, both because of its history and also because of its acoustics and yeah, it always feels like a big deal here, which is great. We love that kind of challenge and opportunity. And yeah, we, I mean, we have we've been playing it on tour now and also it was on tour earlier in the season in European concert halls. For this we had a not so short acoustic rehearsal and the maestro, you know, he always has very specific things he wants to check in a big work like this. Places about balance, you know, places where he wants to check what, how, what kind of resonance and acoustic the hall is giving and then how we adjust, you know, places where maybe in another hall, we need to play fuller and warmer. Here, maybe we need to save a little bit longer because this, this hall has a wonderful body to it, you know, and it's, it's something that, that's great. And so we have to make sure that that, that doesn't bloom too early, especially in a work like this, where it's all about the, the, the gradual buildup.
John Schaefer: And you want that finale to feel like it was always going to happen.
Noah Bendix-Balgley: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But still when it happens, it's still a revelation. So yeah.
John Schaefer: All right, Noah Bendix-Balgley, at the end of an 80-minute journey through Bruckner's Symphony No. 5. I'm glad you're still upright and conscious at the end of all that. Go ice that elbow, I guess. Just like a pitcher at the end of a complete game or something.
Noah Bendix-Balgley: Well, thank you. Great to talk to you, and a pleasure to play here again.
Jeff Spurgeon: Oh, just a thrill to have you, for sure.
One of the first concertmasters of the Berlin Philharmonic, Noah Bendix-Balgley, with us on this broadcast from Carnegie Hall, which we are ready to conclude now with thanks to Clive Gillinson and the staff of Carnegie Hall, as well as to Bruckner author Benjamin Korstvedt and Berlin Philharmonic violinist Noah Bendix-Balgley.
John Schaefer: WQXR team includes engineers George Wellington, Duke Marcos, Noriko Okabe, and Bill Siegmund. Our production team, Eileen Delahunty, Aimée Buchanan, Jade Jiang, Laura Boyman, and Dominic Hall-Thomas. I'm John Schaefer.
Jeff Spurgeon: And I'm Jeff Spurgeon. Carnegie Hall Live is a co production of Carnegie Hall and WQXR in New York.