The Bruckner effect

The lady behind me on Kensington Gore clearly felt that she owed her friend an apology: ‘It’s Bruckner. I don’t know how that happened.’ I felt for her. ‘It’s Nézet-Séguin and the Rotterdam Phil,’ I’d told a succession of my own musical friends. They’d seemed interested. Since the youngish Canadian conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin took over at the New York Metropolitan Opera, he’s vaulted on to the A-list, and while the Rotterdam Philharmonic isn’t a super-orchestra, exactly, people do dimly recall that it was conducted by Valery Gergiev, back when that was still something to boast about. So, the inevitable question: what are they playing? And with one word — Bruckner — the shutters slammed down. I was going to this one alone.

It’s genuinely odd, the effect Bruckner has on some music-lovers — even hardcore Germanophiles who collect Gurrelieders like they’re Pokémon cards, and argue in all seriousness that no, you really can’t have too much Mahler.