Bruckner: Sinfonia n. 5 Alexander Soddy

Orchestra of the National Academy of Santa Cecilia

conductor Alexander Soddy*

Bruckner Symphony No. 5

On the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the birth of Anton Bruckner (1824 - 2024)

The Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia opens the celebrations for the 200th anniversary of the birth of Anton Bruckner (1824-1896), one of the greatest symphonists ever

In the occasion of this first Bruckner premiere, the young British conductor Alexander Soddy (b. 1982), who has already garnered great public and critical acclaim at prestigious theatres such as the Metropolitan in New York, London's Covent Garden, the Bayerische and the Wiener Staatsoper, will conduct the Austrian composer's Fifth Symphony, about which he has declared: Bruckner was a man of great naivety, disarming in his social behaviour. How he succeeded in the conception of those grandiose sonorous edifices that are his Symphonies remains a mystery of art. To approach the Fifth Symphony, perhaps his masterpiece, is to enter a great cathedral. In the Fifth, in fact, Bruckner achieves the most clamorous of his grandiose symphonic constructions. From the single notes he moves on to the construction of structural elements, true lintels that, progressing and enlarging, support a sonorous edifice of astonishing proportions, a cathedral made of music that culminates in the dizzying "dome" that is the Finale: a Chorale in which all the elements of the previous movements return in a combination of dazzling splendour. The infinitely small becoming the infinitely large. Composed in 1875 but not performed until 1894, no other Bruckner symphony is as rich in nicknames as the Fifth: it has been called Medieval, Catholic, Choral, Symphony of Faith and even Tragic. Bruckner himself called it his 'Fantastica' and, in view of the last movement - according to the famous conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler the most monumental in all world music literature - his contrapuntal masterpiece.

*Due to health reasons, Maestro Jaap van Zweden will not be able to keep his engagement in the concerts scheduled for 18, 19 and 20 January and will be replaced - on the podium of the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia - by Maestro Alexander Soddy