Discovering Bruckner

Music

There are several different algorithms I always apply when visiting a new city:

• Find a mountain by the city and run up it,
• And/Or a waterfront through the city and run along it,
• And/Or a race to do while I'm there.
• Talk to people and pick their brains about the town.
• Attend a festival,
• And/Or a sporting event,
• And/Or the symphony.

The last two are kinda new, so I wasn't applying them yet when I moved to Bergen. Ergo I haven't been to as many sporting events or symphonies here as I have in other cities, because to some degree I've stopped exploring Bergen. It's where I live, so I know everything there is to know about it, right? Not really.

This year I've decided to make an effort to get more involved with more cultural things around town. In particular this week I treated myself to the symphony because I heard they were playing Beethoven. To prepare I also studied up on Anton Bruckner, whose work was also being performed last Thursday night. I had never heard of Bruckner. He was a late 19th century Austrian composer who worked in Vienna, like Beethoven had earlier. As the conductor so aptly put it before the performance, his symphonies were his children because he had none (being dedicated to his music). He reworked them again and again, so they grew with him. The version of his 4th symphony performed turned out to be rather different than the one I'd been listening to to prepare. And I have to say I love both!

If you've never heard Bruckner before, his work is everything one expects from 19th century Mitteleuropa. Composition par excellence.