Guangzhou Concert – Tarmo Peltokoski Conducts Bruckner 7

Penned in the same year that the composer’s Fourth Symphony first found success, Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony rises with the quiet grandeur of a vast cathedral, its spiritual strength shaped through patience, peace and poise. With the HK Phil, its newly appointed Music Director draws out the symphony’s arching first theme – a gift of nature or, as Bruckner himself believed, from God – before the work completes its circle in a finale of glowing affirmation. The programme opens with Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs, sung by soprano Asmik Grigorian. The New York Times writes that her singing reveals “a gleaming timbre, dark but not weighty, (that) expresses psychic depletion with graceful clarity,” bringing quiet serenity to Strauss’s farewell.