Sunday, April 13, 2025
Orchestra Hall, Max M. & Marjorie S. Fisher Music Center, Woodward Avenue, Detroit, Michigan
The afternoon following the night before, this second-of-the-weekend Bruckner Eight found Sir Donald and the DSO in close rapport and focussed form, immediately compelling in tempo, shape, balance and blend, add to which a dynamic variance that was unerringly judged, creating an altogether special ambience, Runnicles not rushing the fortissimo peaks: everything integrated without being pedantic, an inevitability that sustained the eighty-two-minute whole. Following a first movement that ended as it should – like a clock stopping – the Scherzo was measured yet bracing in its locomotive power, the Trio pastorally expressive. The wondrous Adagio – eloquent, deeply-felt, sacred – had a magnetic pull that transported the listener, masterfully spacious throughout close-on half-an-hour, from a maestro and dedicated musicians locked as one, the cymbal-capped climax a literal highpoint – craggily reached, momentous in itself, with much to ponder in the aftermath – subsequent to much that had been benedictional, the cut that Nowak accepted in his edition of the 1890 score far less jarring than it can be. With the Finale, Runnicles’s thorough approach avoided structural problems while ensuring full value given to each new idea, culminating in an awe-struck and resplendent coda, the DSO remaining heroic.