Bruckner: Symphony No. 7
Lahav Shani, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra- Allegro moderato
- Adagio : sehr feierlich und sehr langsam
- Scherzo : sehr schnell
- Finale : bewegt, doch nicht schnell
Lahav Shani, Chief Conductor of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra for the past five years, conducts the Dutch ensemble in Bruckner’s epic Symphony No 7.
Shani, who first encountered Bruckner’s music as a young double bass player in Israel, admires the Austrian composer for his proverbially grand symphonic architecture, but also for his vision and the atmosphere he creates. Shani emphasises the need for a conductor to take a finely judged and a coherent approach in the Symphony No 7, following a storyline and building up to the mighty climaxes over extended periods … “from a hint of light to the whole world,” as he describes it.
Bruckner idolised Wagner, and Shani reminds us that he composed the Symphony No 7 in the early 1880s, as the older composer was dying. “It is a tribute from one artist to another,” he says. In particular, Bruckner introduces Wagner tubas (an instrument created at Wagner’s instigation for Der Ring des Nibelungen) into a symphony for the first time. The four Wagner tubas in Bruckner’s score make their initial appearance in the second movement and in an especially portentous moment join in a solemn chorale with the contrabass tuba against a background of low strings.
Shani’s sense for symphonic structure and drama, and the Rotterdam Philharmonic’s response to it, was evident in the recording (released in 2022) of a work composed some 50 years after Bruckner’s: Shostakovich’s Symphony No 5. Gramophone magazine’s reviewer admired “ … an account where the feeling is refreshingly one of rediscovery. From bar one there is an inescapable and unremitting tension. Shani has a wonderful nose for atmosphere … The second subject [of the first movement] brings a glimmer of hope and warmth but the theatre of war is soon upon us and Shani’s darkly imposing Rotterdam brass bring home the development thrillingly ... Shani reminds me just how achingly beautiful the slow movement of this piece is. The atmosphere is again distilled and super-spatial, with string-playing that leans wholeheartedly into the harmonic pull of the music – and honestly I don’t think I have ever heard the transition into the hushed final pages sound quite as breathtaking … A terrific disc.”