Philharmonia/Nelsons/Lewis review – Bruckner’s fractured Third flows in the right hands

Royal Festival Hall, London
Andris Nelsons’s close attention to phrasing, balance and dynamics was compelling, while Paul Lewis’s Mozart was impeccable but self-contained

Even though he is giving his considerable all at the Royal Opera in a hyperactive account of Wagner’s Flying Dutchman, Andris Nelsons can clearly still find enough energy in reserve to give truly remarkable orchestral concerts, too. In some respects, though, the journey from pit to podium was a more logical one than usual in this case, since Bruckner’s Third Symphony is suffused with Wagnerian influences and its opening trumpet theme, which returns in splendour at the symphony’s close, is closely related to the Dutchman’s horn motif.

Nevertheless, Bruckner’s Third is a problematic symphony, on account of the composer’s many rewrites – he removed most of the more explicitly Wagnerian references – and the consequent enhancement of the already episodic character of Bruckner’s symphonic writing at this stage of his career. Making coherent sense of this symphony seems to require something more than even Nelsons can bring to it, for it is a something that eludes most conductors, perhaps because the work is just too fractured. Yet the symphony is rarely without interest or moments of lonely beauty. Nelsons’s close attention to phrasing, balance and dynamics was characteristically compelling at multiple points in the score, and with the Philharmonia playing with great intensity, there were times when the symphony flowed in ways that it rarely does in other hands.

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