BRUCKNER & MOZART to 2015. As a violinist, Storgårds is an active chamber musician and recitalist, performing at renowned festivals such as the Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival in Finland and the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival in the U. S.
Storgårds became concertmaster of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra under Esa-Pekka Salonen, before studying conducting with Jorma Panula and Eri Klas. He received the Finnish State Prize for Music in 2002 and the Pro Finlandia Prize 2012.
NOTES ON THE PROGRAM
By Heather O ' Donovan
Anton Bruckner
Born September 4, 1824, in Ansfelden, Austria Died October 11, 1896, in Vienna, Austria
SYMPHONY NO. 8 IN C MINOR [ 1887 / 90 ]
“ I found this newest [ symphony ] interesting in detail but strange as a whole and even repugnant.” Thus opened music critic Eduard Hanslick’ s review of the 1892 premiere of Bruckner’ s Eighth Symphony. Hanslick’ s vitriolic assessment of the Eighth— indeed, of all of Bruckner’ s symphonies— was fueled by abhorrence of another composer: Richard Wagner.
From the mid to late 19th century, an aesthetic quarrel raged between supporters of traditional, academically-minded music, as represented by Brahms, and the more innovative and— as per critics like Hanslick— self-indulgent music of the New German School, with Wagner as figurehead. Hanslick was a dominant voice in the debate, contending that Brahms’ s music preserved“ the voices of Mozart and Haydn as if from celestial sanctuary,” whereas Wagner’ s was“ a distortion, a perversion […] contrary to the nature of human hearing and feeling.”
It was as a result of Hanslick’ s animus that the symphonist Bruckner came to be linked with the New German
School, dismissed as a perilous extension of Wagner’ s proclivity for musical excess. Bruckner greatly admired Wagner, even dedicating his Third Symphony to him. But Bruckner’ s was not a temperament that could weather the blustering winds of controversy. This mild transplant from rural Austria grew disillusioned by the offhand dismissal of his compositions by the Viennese musical establishment.
Bruckner was profoundly susceptible to such criticisms, often manifesting as an almost compulsive urge to revise his works or, in the case of his so-called Symphony No. 0 in D minor, to abandon them entirely. The present Eighth Symphony was composed from 1884 to 1887, but after the conductor Hermann Levi rejected the first version— encouraging Bruckner to“ confer with your friends, with Schalk [ a former pupil who assisted the composer with revisions ]”— Bruckner embarked on an extensive reworking that occupied him until 1890. Constant revisions to this and the other symphonies have led to what scholars call the Bruckner Problem— the difficulty of determining which of the many, often conflicting, versions of his symphonies should be played in performance.
In the years that followed Bruckner’ s death, new editions of the Eighth attempted to address this dilemma: one by Robert Haas in the 1930s, another by Leopold Nowak in the 1950s. Tonight’ s performance uses Haas’ edition, a hybrid of the 1887 and 1890 versions that privileges Bruckner’ s unpublished manuscript scores rather than the published version, which was likely heavily influenced by Schalk.
In the last decade and a half of his life, Bruckner’ s music was at last gaining something of a foothold with orchestras, including with the long-inimical Vienna Philharmonic. It was a great sadness to Bruckner that poor health prevented him from attending these now more frequent concerts. After his death, Bruckner supporters would continue campaigning for his works. Gustav Mahler, for instance— whose piano edition of Bruckner’ s Third Symphony, the“ Wagner,” had helped rehabilitate its reputation following a disastrous 1877 Viennese premiere— performed all of the composer’ s symphonies in New York in 1908, helping to broaden their international reach. It is a result of such advocacy that, today, Bruckner’ s symphonies are regarded not as“ relics of an intellectual epidemic,” as Hanslick once pathologized the proponents of the New German School, but as deserving mainstays of the symphonic repertoire.
Instrumentation: Three flutes, three oboes, three clarinets, three bassoons( third doubling contrabassoon), eight horns( four doubling Wagner tubas), three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, cymbals( pair), triangle, three harps, and strings.
HEATHER O’ DONOVAN is a vocalist and writer whose program notes have appeared at Carnegie Hall, the Manhattan School of Music, the Aspen Music Festival and School, and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. She is the dramaturg and librettist of Princess Ida: The Glow Up, an award-winning Gilbert & Sullivan adaptation premiered by the Manhattan School of Music Undergraduate Opera Theatre in spring 2025 and is in the process of developing the libretto for her first full-length opera.
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