Bruckner panned

Composers Datebook

Synopsis

On this day in the year 1886, critic Gustav Dompke wrote these lines in the German Times of Vienna, after attending a performance of one of Anton Bruckner’s symphonies: “We recoil in horror before this rotting odor which rushes into our nostrils from the disharmonies of this putrefactive counterpoint…Bruckner composes like a drunkard!”

Today, with Bruckner’s symphonies performed and recorded so often, it’s doubtful many listeners “recoil in horror” from his rich Romantic harmonies, but he’s always been a little controversial. Bruckner’s European contemporaries and his early American audiences found his approach to symphonic composition puzzling, bizarre or — more often than not — simply boring.

The vogue for Bruckner symphonies in America had to wait until the latter part of the 20th century, a full century after many of them received their premiere performances in Europe.

In 1941, for example, when Bruno Walter conducted Bruckner’s giant Symphony No. 8 at Carnegie Hall with the New York Philharmonic, music critic Olin Downes lamented that Walter hadn’t chosen a “more interesting” program and noted that the Bruckner symphony “sent a number from the hall before it had finished.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Anton Bruckner (1824-1896): Symphony No. 8; Concergebouw Orchestra; Riccardo Chailly, conductor; London 466 653