Bruckner and women? It’s a 2023 thing
OrchestrasThe bicentenary of Bruckner’s birth falls in 2024, so the city of Linz will be marking time next year to fill the gap year before it rolls out the big guns for its famous son.
Introducing the 2023 festival, Mayor Klaus Luger said yesterday: ‘Es wird ein Brucknerfest mit einem ordentlichen Tabubruch, es gab noch nie ein Brucknerfest mit keinem Werk Bruckners. Das Haus wagt unkonventionelles, einen Aufbruch und Umbruch“, sieht Luger des Brucknerfest 2023 als Gegenton zum anstehenden Brucknerjahr 2024. „Bruckners Verhältnis zu Frauen war nicht wirklich vorhanden, die Rolle von Frauen in der Kunst damals ebenfalls. Dass dieser Aspekt aufgearbeitet wird, passt auch gut zu unserer Stadt“, dankt Luger dem Brucknerhaus-Team für den Mut und ist optimistisch, dass es viel Resonanz beim Publikum geben wird.’
In English: ‘It will be a Bruckner festival with a proper breach of taboo, there has never been a Bruckner festival without a single work by Bruckner. The Bruckner house dares to do something unconventional, a departure and an upheaval.’ Luger described the Bruckner Festival 2023 as a counterpoint to the upcoming Bruckner Year 2024. “Bruckner’s relationship to women was not really there, nor was the role of women in art at the time. The fact that this aspect is being worked on suits our city well.’
Full details here.
At first glance, old Anton here looks like a poorly tailored Barenboim.
“Bruckner’s relationship to women was not really there”. Absolute LOLZ. What on earth can this mean?
I suspect it means that Alondra de la Parra is going to be conducting one or more Bruckner symphonies in Linz. Maybe even a full cycle.
And at the conclusion, she will be the first woman to accept one of Bruckner’s proposals, and agree to marry him at St. Florian.
He was such an odd person in so many ways that his marriage proposals to impossibly younger girls hardly ranks as interesting, except for that fact that they seemed almost designed to be rejected.
And they talked about Brahms the impotent!!! Go figure.
The wikipedia page about him makes uncomfortable.
Who cares what sort of non-conforming person Bruckner might have been? It’s the music that matters.
And to these ears, Bruckner is the greatest symphonic composer of all time, whose unreachable achievements exceed even Beethoven’s. It’s hard for me to believe after having been listening to Bruckner’s music for 30+ years, that any human was capable of reaching such creative heights.
No one has ever said it better than Hans-Hubert Schonzeler, when he wrote in his Bruckner biography (mandatory reading, BTW):
“Bruckner has been called ‘God’s Own Musician,’ and it has been said that each of his symphonies is in reality one gigantic arch which starts on earth in the midst of suffering humanity, sweeps up towards the heavens to the very Throne of Grace, and returns to earth with a message of peace.”
Bruckner had an important influence on the composers who came after and he’s important. The 4th and the 9th are great moments of art but I never found the 8th and the 7th what I wanted, and I tryed…. But sorry it’s not Beethoven and Schubert. I can’t find the emotion I found with Ravel Mahler and Sibelius. And it’s a fact that outside of Austria and Germany the influence of Bruckner he is not so big and I don’t have the feeling that it will change. Bruckner with haitink lost his best conductor. I’am not sure that in 2050 he will be more played in concerts.
Hear Hear, Herr Doktor! I agree with everything you say. Always been the greatest symphonist to my ears as well. I discovered Bruckner when I was in my late twenties out of pure curiosity as my father had been a fan in the 1960s and had visited St Florian whilst on holiday in Austria. I am now 76 years old and am just as passionate about this music as I was when a young man. Bruckner’s music is like a wonderful message from God assuring us that,, for all our earthly failures, the Gates of Heaven can still be reached at the end.
He chased women years younger than himself and proposed to them but none of them wanted him. I wonder why…
Jeffery Epstein wasn’t around at the time.
Could there be distortion in that photograph that makes his head appear so small and his shoes so big?
Absolutely hilarious!! Big shoes to fill?!! I give up.
It was shot on an iPhone.
No, he was an organist.
In his later years Bruckner had a housekeeper one Frau Kathi Kachelmaier, who brooked no nonsense from him. At times, when exasperated with her, Bruckner would say, in effect, “who do you think you are? I am Bruckner after all!”
Barenboim looks younger in this picture… hmmm… wait…
Eh, and in 2027, we will have the bicentenary of LVB’s passing. What ideas will they have in Bonn, and Vienna, to non-celebrate that?