Bringing music to the common man, the Boston Philharmonic's "Bose Discovery Series" entertains and educates every would-be symphony enthusiast. Maestro and music teacher extraordinaire, British-born conductor Benjamin Zander leads the ensemble with charm and enthusiasm.
As part of each Thursday night concert program, Zander navigates the audience through the complexities and subtleties of well-known musical works. His energy and knowledge about classical music permeates his speaking style, and he transforms even the least musically-inclined individuals into avid music appreciators.
But don't expect to be babied or talked down to; this weekend's program didn't feature well-known pieces such as Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf" or Tchaikovsky's "The 1812 Overture." Instead, Zander chose the immensely complicated and difficult "Symphony No. 8 in C minor," by 19th century composer Anton Bruckner.
Harvard's beautiful Sanders Theater played host to the Thursday night's performance. The theater is an intimate but cramped space complete with puritanical wooden benches with which the pious Bruckner would have sympathized. This relatively small hall is a rare space for a full-sized symphony orchestra, and its sound resonates forcefully and clearly. The venue works well for Zander's musical lectures as well.
Zander warned the audience that Bruckner would not be easy to understand, stating that even his musicians took a while to like and respect the composer's work. In fact, choosing Bruckner was a daring pick, as this weekend's concerts were only the third in a total of four seasonal programs.
BPO audience members consist of a mix of regular subscribers and inner-city school students brought in through the "Music Without Boundaries" program. Zander's advanced taste in music is a boon for those who wish to cultivate their own appreciation. Why be lectured on an easy piece when one of the best music teachers around will lead novices in understanding more difficult works of music? After all, it is the most complex symphonies that often offer the most rewarding experiences: no pain, no gain.
Zander cited one critic of Bruckner's day who called his eighth symphony the "anti-musical rantings of a half-wit." In contrast, the conductor explained the work in terms of the composer's deep Catholic faith. The Eighth is a search for calm in a world of turmoil - a tortuous journey of extraordinary beauty that can be thought of in terms of the composer's very personal spiritual experience.
To take listeners on this journey, Bruckner utilizes different tonalities, or musical keys, to the fullest. The concert program explaining this reads like something out of a tonal theory class. The first movement changes especially rapidly from B-flat minor to C minor, and is interrupted by a fortissimo. And if this seems difficult to understand, Zander assisted audience members by having the orchestra play appropriate excerpts in order to provide somewhat of an anchor for a composition that is characteristically devoid of structure.
That's not to say that Bruckner wrote no musically memorable lines. In fact, the symphony opens with a rhythm straight out of Beethoven's Ninth, which is reused in diverse variations throughout, and the ending of the first movement has been described as an unmistakable "death watch," signifying a transition from depression to rejection. In addition, the second Adagio movement is well known as the best slow movement he ever wrote.
But to pick out specific lines from Bruckner is to deny his Eighth symphony much of its beauty. Written to be experienced as a complete spiritual journey, the opus works best when one listens to the complicated tonal structure along with these memorable lines. This is the kind of masterpiece that only gets better with more study and more experience. In the words of Zander, "If you are bored, then you don't really take the journey, and it's our fault."
