Friday night's concert from the NCH Dublin (videos usually get deleted on the following Friday morning)
RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra
Mihhail Gerts conductor (
replacing Nathalie Stutzmann)
Wagner Parsifal Vorspiel und Karfreitagszauber
(Prelude and Good Friday music) / 26’
Bruckner Symphony No. 7 / 64’ (starts 27 minutes into the video)
Mihhail Gerts, conducting the RTÉ NSO for the third time this season. His recent work with the RTÉ NSO includes Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony in early February, and a performance last September including
The Rite of Spring, and the
Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini with Fiachra Garvey as soloist.
The guru and his disciple – Wagner and Bruckner – come together in two towering works that exalt in music’s transcendental power to transport us into the sublime.
The Prelude and Good Friday music from Richard Wagner’s last opera
Parsifal bookends the epic tale of the knight who goes in search of the Holy Grail to conjure Arthurian romance and religious awe in music of elusive mystery and overwhelming magnificence.
Bruckner had already paid tribute to Wagner in his Third Symphony, quoting two of the elder composer’s operas and dedicating the work to him. The Seventh Symphony pays more sophisticated homage, at its heart a soulful passage, heart-wrenching in its bleak, beautiful sincerity, described by Bruckner as ‘funeral music for the Master’.
One of the truly great symphonies, Bruckner’s Seventh is a work to surrender to and submerge yourself in for a journey into a world of the imagination and the heart unlike any other.
Audio link