Beethoven 7 & Bruch’s Violin Concerto

Max Bruch’s first major orchestral work was surely the start of a glittering career in 1868. 

Europe’s most famous violinists flocked to play his Violin Concerto, and still do, but almost all his further works were ignored.  All the rights to his celebrated concerto he’d sold for a pittance, and at the age of just 30 Bruch’s long career was on the way down.

But what a legacy!  Australia’s Emily Sun starts this sweeping and melodious interchange between violin and orchestra with an almost tentative, searching sound which by the end matches her 60 or so SSO colleagues in full roar.  It’s a tumbling, unfolding musical journey, a rich conversation of growing, almost competitive intensity between violin and orchestra as they match themes and phrases, leading to a final movement dancing with a gypsy flourish.

Emily Sun expertly sails through the swells and ebbs of these beautiful songs, while Mark Wigglesworth artfully conducts an orchestra to mirror and expand on her journey.

Wigglesworth then abandons his own score to deliver Ludwig Beethoven’s crashing and ever climatic Seventh Symphony, and for a conductor an interestingly sparse use of gestures. Still, his orchestra negotiates perfectly the rhythmic phrases, and their repetition by other instruments in this rhythmic merry-go-round.  

It’s all very grandiose and exhilarating, and it’s no surprise that at the 1813 premiere Beethoven’s contemporaries thought he was celebrating the defeat of Napoleon.  Or that Weber reportedly said the work showed Beethoven was “ripe for the madhouse”.

Certainly for me, the frequent repetitions and quick marches from stealth to explosion made any narrative arc inexplicable, and unrelieved by anything like lyrical appeal of his earlier symphonies.  But the cavernous newly renovated concert hall was packed to the rafters by a mostly elderly audience who loved it.

Martin Portus

Images (top): Sydney Symphony Orchestra (Photographer: Daniel Boud) and Emily Sun.