Proms Interval: Bruckner and the Symphonic Boa Constrictors
When Brahms compared Anton Bruckner's epic symphonies with being caught in the inescapable, life-sapping coils of a giant snake, had he misunderstood Bruckner's bold originality?
Even today, some music lovers will nod knowingly when they hear Brahms's comparison of Anton Bruckner's epic symphonies with a nightmarishly scary giant snake that kills its victims in the inescapable embrace of its crushing coils. Poor Bruckner, ever the easy target of sneering critics. At once childishly obsessive and intensely spiritual, ultra-sophisticated musician and naΓ―ve country bumpkin: even by composers' standards he stood out as weird. No wonder the music was so hopeless!
But in this special Proms Listening Service, Tom Service wants you to consider Bruckner as being one of the greatest and most original symphonists of all time (whose symphonies really don't all sound the same), as much the master of daring long-range musical form as of the perfect miniature.
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The Listening Service
An odyssey through the musical universe, presented by Tom Service
