Texas Classical Review

Over the past decade, Christoph Eschenbach’s visits to the Houston Symphony have come to mean that it’s Anton Bruckner Time. The conductor’s recent returns to the orchestra he once led have featured Bruckner’s Symphonies No. 1, 4 and 8 and the Te Deum. 

Saturday night’s reprise of the Fourth at Jones Hall belonged to a bigger picture. Eschenbach is leading an international  Bruckner symphony cycle. The event servesas a double celebration of his own 85^th birthday—which arrives Feb. 20—and the bicentennial of a composer whose music has long been one of his specialties.

The performances, which will yield audio and video recordings, will match each work with a different orchestra, and the Houston Symphony is the only U.S. group Eschenbach has tapped.

Bruckner’s Fourth comprised Saturday’s entire program, and Eschenbach and company brought much the same power and eloquence to the work that they did in 2019. But this performance was no mere repetition.

One key difference is that both the orchestra and the work reaped the benefits of modifications made to Jones Hall over the past few summers. A new stage shell and changes to the auditorium’s side walls, among other things, have improved the acoustic, projecting the orchestra’s playing into the hall with greater richness and presence. The cellos and double basses evidently have gotten a particular boost.

That amped up the grandeur of Bruckner’s trademark climaxes, which  sounded even more rooted in the depths of the earth. But the renovation also paid dividends at the quieter end of the spectrum.

In the yearning melody that opens the slow movement, the cellos sang out with a warmth and resonance that they hadn’t possessed previously. The violas’ restless ensuing theme, full of surges and hushes, gained new impact.

The performance was similar to that of 2019 in its broad outlines—the steady momentum, the dance-tune buoyancy balancing out the majesty, the lyrical flow of the slow movement, the dynamism of the scherzo.

But vivid details made it all the more fresh and telling. In the horn solo that launches the symphony, principal William Vermeulen gave the upward leaps a vaulting quality that made them eager and assertive, befitting the start of an hourlong work. As the rest of the orchestra took up the motif, they maintained that air of vigor, helping set off the music’s first sonic groundswell.

When Bruckner’s fortissimos arrived, Eschenbach and the orchestra made a potent difference between grand, hymnlike climaxes and stormy ones. For all of the brasses’ heft, the strings’ drive and assertiveness redoubled the electricity: Even plucked strings added bite.

The strings barely murmured at the start of the slow movement, gliding through their accompaniment to the cello tune. And after Bruckner’s ruminations ran their course, the movement tiptoed to its end, its last staccato note just audible.

Amid the Scherzo’s swaggering horn calls, Eschenbach brought out the middle section’s lilt without losing the overall flow. And even though the woodwinds stumbled briefly around the middle of the finale, Eschenbach kept the momentum going through all the contrasts between turbulence, lyricism and the final blaze of triumph.

After the big finish, as Eschenbach singled out players to receive the audience’s applause, he even waded back to the double basses to shake hands. When he finally stepped back onto the podium for a solo bow, the musicians shuffled their feet in the traditional orchestral salute, and the audience’s burst of applause and cheers had nearly the impact of a brassy Bruckner climax.

The Houston Symphony will repeat the program 2 p.m. Sunday at Jones Hall. houstonsymphony.org