Prom 65 – BBC Symphony Orchestra / Semyon Bychkov

Bruckner Symphony no.8 in C minor WAB108 (1884-7, rev. 1889-90 [ed. Nowak])

Royal Albert Hall, London
Monday 4 September 2023

by Richard Whitehouse photos by Chris Christodoulou / BBC

It may have taken 70 years for its Proms premiere but the Eighth has since become the second most often played of Bruckner’s symphonies (this being its 21st hearing), and a near capacity house greeted tonight’s performance by the BBC Symphony Orchestra with Semyon Bychkov.

At home across a broad repertoire, Bychkov has of yet directed relatively little Bruckner, and the first movement took its time to settle. Fugitive rather than speculative in their emotional import, those distinct motivic elements lacked a final degree of definition and only began to take on greater cumulative focus during a development whose unfolding drama was matched but not exceeded by the climax of the coda – after which, that inexorable winding down into silence was precisely controlled while curiously unevocative in its sense of time running out.

With the outer sections taken at a swift but never headlong tempo that enabled its underlying ostinato pattern to be perceived throughout, the Scherzo exuded energy while also mystery in what remains Bruckner’s most powerful instance of a genre he made his own. The brass was at its most assured, and Bychkov duly avoided any temptation to make the lengthy trio a self-contained episode. Its unforced progress brought winsome contributions from woodwind and harps, the reprise then having audibly greater impetus as it surged towards its decisive close.

As so often in this symphony, the Adagio found the interpretation and its realization in most potent accord. Mindful to draw its continual thematic restatements into a consistent process of developing variation, Bychkov conveyed the music’s expressive but also spatial grandeur with an assurance hardly less evident in its unfolding tonal trajectory. Nor did the excising of material in revision impede its course, even if the sudden appearance of cymbals and triangle at its climax sounded more than usually redundant. A pity, moreover, that momentary failings of intonation among Wagner tubas affected what was otherwise his near perfect rendering of the coda – Bruckner’s distilling of main motifs, underpinned by the halting accompaniment, finding closure only at that point where everything stops as the movement comes full circle.

From here the Finale set out with due purposefulness, even though the occasional rhythmic hesitancy gave notice of an approach in which the whole did not quite match the sum of its admittedly impressive parts. Strategically coinciding with those divisions of the movement overall, the chorale-like main theme brought a resplendent response as left its eloquent then ominous successors sounding incidental within the ongoing formal scheme, and though the extensive development did not lack for variety of content, its discursiveness made for a less than perfect unity. Any remaining tentativeness was none the less dispelled in a coda whose gradual emergence made for an apotheosis of unusual clarity – the superimposing of themes not just ingenious in its technical skill but cathartic in its conveying of a journey completed.

The illustrious rollcall of conductors who have tackled this work at the Proms speaks for itself, and while Bychkov might not yet have joined the ranks of Wand, Haitink and Mehta et al, his belief in and commitment to Bruckner’s Eighth was amply communicated to all those present.

For more on the 2023 BBC Proms, visit the festival’s website at the BBC. Meanwhile click on the names for more information on the BBC Symphony Orchestra and guest conductor Semyon Bychkov – and finally composer Anton Bruckner