Bruckner

Last night I attended a Chicago Symphony Orchestra Concert that featured a performance of Anton Bruckner's Seventh Symphony. This work, in E Major, was his first public success which he achieved a the young age of 60. The performance, led by maestro Bernard Haitink, was one worthy of this massive composition. About an hour in length, heavenly some would say, Bruckner scales the heights of spiritual intensity in music. His achievement reminds me of the words of Milan Kundera in his wonderful novel, The Unbearable Lightness of Being:

"unbounded music, absolute sound, a pleasant and happy all-encompassing, overpowering, window-rattling din to engulf, once and for all, the pain, the futility, the vanity of words."

The orchestra responded to the music and the conductor with all the might that was required by this masterpiece. The transcendence of the spirit through music moved this listener to the halls of rapture once again.