Hans Graf and the Colorado Symphony Perform Bruckner 7

Boettcher Concert Hall, Denver, Colorado, March 7, 2009

Hans Graf conducts the Seventh as a middle-period work - a logical and intensely lyrical successor to the Sixth. The first and second movements do not overwhelm the third and fourth. The Finale was the best movement of all: incredibly dramatic. The unison passages were superb! The way the orchestra ended phrases as though they were one musician - you have to be listening to a live performance to realize how thrilling that is!

Special credit goes to principal clarinet Bil Jackson. He was fantastic in the first movement. The clarinet part in Bruckner 7 has never sounded so good.

The pre-intermission pairing was Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante performed by concertmaster Yumi Hwang-Williams and principal viola Basil Vendryes. They did a terrific job, and the pairing with the Sinfonia Concertante let me hear the violins play melancholy falling phrases - so typical of Mozart - in the Adagio to the Seventh.

Usually when our principals are soloists, the associate principals take over as section leaders for the rest of the concert. For the Bruckner, Hwang-Williams and Vendryes came out after the intermission to lead their sections. What a powerful statement about the importance of the string playing in the Bruckner Seventh!

Kristin Jurkscheit, associate principal horn, played first tenor tuba; she brought a horn player's sense of warmth and expressiveness to the tenor tuba part (what a great coda to the Adagio). The always superb principal horn Michael Thornton made sure that the passages with horn and tenor tuba were a feast for the ears.

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