Music Reviews : Rattle Puts Heart Into Bruckner Seventh

Simon Rattle achieved the near-impossible Thursday night: He made a Bruckner symphony seem less than interminable.

Actually, he did better than that. With the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the 39-year-old conductor sustained the sense of wonder and tension that Bruckner evokes in his quiet, mysterious opening for the entire hour and 10 minutes of the massive, and in lesser hands meandering, Seventh Symphony. He made the work sound something very much like a masterpiece. No small feat.

This is not to be coy. Anyone who has his head on straight and two ears on the sides of that head must have ambivalent feelings toward the symphonies of Anton Bruckner, or so it seems. For all their apparent grandiosity and length, the Bruckner symphonies reveal a composer of surprisingly limited invention. Of no composer’s works is it more true to say, if you’ve heard one you’ve heard them all.

But Rattle is not of two minds about Bruckner, at least not the Seventh Symphony. In fact, if his performance weren’t so intelligent, one would be tempted to call it mindless. As corny as this may sound, it was all heart. It was unequivocal.

In the process, he got the Philharmonic to play like true believers themselves. With violins separated right and left (and basses and cellos to the left), the Bruckner sound opened up and Rattle uncovered unsuspected contrapuntal complication and painted with an expanded palette of colors. The string section sounded especially wonderful, intense but never pressed, shimmering and luxuriant, committed even in the unending tremolos.

The remarkable thing about Rattle’s interpretation was its drive, achieved completely without pushing. This was--except for the searing Scherzo--an altogether leisurely, fluid and poetic reading. And yet the argument never sagged.

With his left hand raised at waist level and still, a beatific smile on his face and wide-open eyes, Rattle stood awe-struck, with authority, in front of this music, and the orchestra responded in kind. Climaxes weren’t the simple reiterations they so often become in Bruckner, but stages along the way, each one bigger than the last and built slowly from within--the symphony as cathedral. We liked it.

The first half was made of different cloth. With Peter Serkin as soloist, Stravinsky’s Concerto for Piano and Winds stomped along jauntily and joyously. The pianist nicely highlighted the spots where the composer eases up from his insistent accenting and syncopation and showed a keen sense of sonority in the strikingly beautiful second movement.

It still seemed like Rattle’s show, however, and with nine double basses and winds at full throttle, he often swamped Serkin. But it was impossible not to like Rattle’s outgoing and emphatic way.

To open, Rattle offered another 90th-birthday tribute to Sir Michael Tippett in the form of the composer’s 1962 Praeludium for Brass, Bells and Percussion, a thick, formidable and thorny affair, which the conductor nevertheless purposefully directed.

The Bruckner was a miracle, though. Drop your plans and go.