The first movement is 28 minutes long and the second movement even longer. But he manages to squeeze all four movements into less than an hour and a half. Remarkable performance by the Berlin Philharmonic. But what I find most remarkable is that the great Romanian conductor Sergiu Celibidache conducts it from memory. How can you possibly memorize an hour and a half of orchestral music this monumental? Plus he might have a few other works in his memory.
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Well the Berliners could play it from memory haha. The B7 is laid out in a structurally and audibly clear way despite its length which accounts for its unusual concert success in Bruckner's lifetime (a very rare occurrence). Wisely the 3rd and 4th movements are relatively brief for Bruckner so the first two movements are 2/3rds of the symphony time wise. Also Celi is very slow. The average duration of a performance is 65-70 minutes.
ReplyDeleteWhen you consider Central European conductors grew up on this from little kiddees it's not overly surprising that both the conductor and orchestra can sleepwalk through it later in life. I think the Symphony 3 and Symphony 8 would be trickier to do that way. BTW I think it's more accurate to say that Bruckner had the same musical expressive goals in his symphonies than to say he wrote the same symphony 9 (or 10 or 11) times.
While what you say is true, conducting from memory, I would estimate, requires more than that you have the structure clear in your mind and the main tunes. You also have to know all the secondary voices in this huge texture. Unless you want the orchestra to be smirking at you behind your back. There is a story from an orchestra that I used to know very well that with one rather inexpert conductor they would pencil in the score "don't look up!" in places where his beat might be distracting.
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