Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony Soar with Bruckner 8 at Heinz Hall

PITTSBURGH, PA

Last weekend, I attended a recording session of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra in Heinz Hall.

Ok, that needs some clarification. After witnessing the PSO’s triumphant return to Carnegie Hall back in December with music director Manfred Honeck (they still have the glowing NY Times review posted to the front page of their website) and hearing Honeck guest conduct the NY Phil last month, I scanned the orchestra’s schedule to see what might warrant a return trip to Pittsburgh, where I’ve been attending PSO concerts for nearly 30 years. And there it was: Feb 20-22, Honeck leading Bruckner’s monumental 8th symphony. Not only that, but they’d be recording it for future release on Reference Recordings, the PSO’s label since 2013; their 2024 recording of Bruckner’s 7th won the Grammy for best Engineered Album. I booked my plane ticket that day.

I landed in Pittsburgh last Friday and, after checking into my downtown hotel, made my way over to Heinz Hall where Manfred – he doesn’t ask to be called “maestro”, though I still obliquely called him that – sat with me for over an hour to discuss his life in music and how he balances his responsibilities in Pittsburgh – where he is now in his 18th season – with his ever-growing international career. I’ll get into all of that another time, but for now, let me share some of Manfred’s thoughts about Bruckner and how he approaches the towering, occasionally polarizing 8th symphony.

“For me, the 8th is probably the most important symphony Bruckner wrote. It is a mystery, asking what lies beyond this world. Forty years ago, I was not yet prepared to understand the mysterium of Bruckner. You need experience. You need wisdom to go into this music. It has much, much more to offer than you think.” (Manfred demurred when I asked him what he thought about 30 year old Klaus Mäkelä conducting the 8th with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra earlier this month. “We all have a lot of ideas for scores we would like to conduct,” Honeck said.)

“Every time Bruckner revised his symphonies, he made them better.” (Note: this is not a universally held opinion.) Take the end of the first movement of the 8th: originally ending with a standard fortissimo, he made it completely different. He turned it into a funeral march, the music swinging back and forth like a pendulum. It gets softer, softer, softer…then it dies away. When I first did this, I made a big mistake. I used some rubati, some ritardandi. But that’s not what Bruckner intended. So I changed it immediately.”

“I am obsessed with this idea of what’s behind the music. In the second movement trio, the sudden change in mood can be ascribed to the point in which Bruckner intended to have the “Deutscher Michel” (the mythical German national hero) “pray before the Madonna. Same is true of the beginning of the finale, which begins with the sound of three galloping Emperors. If you don’t know what’s behind that, you won’t get it.”

“Bruckner has this reputation as an organist, as deeply religious, as an esteemed professor of counterpoint. But he was also deeply human. He played every weekend in a trio for wedding parties. He knew all of these polkas and waltzes, all of which had an influence on his symphonies. I think much more about that side of him now, how he connects to that Austrian tradition: not just music, but love of wine, Wiener Schnitzel, Tafelspitz! I want to see Bruckner as a whole person. He also had a great sense of humor: one of his friends once asked him how he would react if one of the many girls he proposed to actually said yes. ‘Oh, I never thought about that,’ he said.”

“I’ve played this symphony myself.” (Manfred performed Bruckner 8 as a violist with the Vienna Philharmonic on numerous occasions, including in Herbert von Karajan’s final Carnegie Hall concert in 1989.) “I learned a lot from Karajan. He had an enormous feeling for sound. I remember he said one time, “Don’t play loud, but strong.” But there were others, also. I don’t always agree with Celibidache – he was too slow sometimes – but he had some great feeling for this music. Abbado was amazing, Muti did great Bruckner. Basically, if you know what to do, then it will be alright.”

“Bruckner’s music isn’t loved in America as much as he is in Austria and Germany. But, once you’ve gotten it, you’ll forever be in love with it.”

Apparently, there’s still a Bruckner learning curve in Pittsburgh: all three of last weekend’s concerts had nearly 1,000 unsold seats, which likely had as much to do with Bruckner’s relatively limited appeal as it did with Heinz Hall’s overly-large capacity (2700 seats). On Friday night, I sat in the 3rd row of the upstairs balcony (i.e. “Dress Circle”), which was purported to have the best sound in the hall. But the swaths of empty seats felt unsettling, and more than a little sad given this orchestra’s world-beating track record in Austro-German repertoire under Honeck. I have little doubt that if this concert had been held in Carnegie Hall, it would have been completely sold out. (When we spoke, Manfred didn’t seem bothered by the projected low attendance, preferring to focus instead on the recording. I’m not sure the same was true for the musicians, who were the ones facing the audience during the performance.)

Unusually, there was an opener on the program: Samy Moussa’s Adgilis Deda – Hymn for Orchestra, which was commissioned by the PSO in 2024 and will be included on the recording. In a brief conversation with Manfred onstage, Moussa said that he wrote the piece in Georgia – the country, not the U.S. state – during a fallow time in his musical output. He found inspiration in the Georgian earth mother deity, whose myth he translated into a 12 minute work of vibrant color and shimmering, brass-driven grandeur. It was cinematic and accessible, if not particularly-groundbreaking, and received a warm reception from the audience.

But the 8th was the thing. At 85 minutes, this is a symphony which doesn’t so much invite close listening as surrendering yourself over to it: with its repetitive structure and extended duration, it’s closer to the postmodern music of the mid-20th century than it is to that of the late 19th. This is particularly evident in the Adagio, which is the 8th’s emotional, spiritual center. At nearly half an hour, it seems to stretch all sense of time and space, and before long I found myself falling under it’s entrancing spell. This is music of gorgeous depth and serenity, tinged with a sadness that eventually falls away, in what Manfred refers to as a “stepping into eternity.”

Having heard everyone from the Cleveland Orchestra to the Dresden Staatskapelle perform this work in person – not to mention dozens of recordings by the best orchestras in the world – I feel I have a fair gauge of what a strong performance should sound like. Suffice to say, the Pittsburghers met, if not surpassed those big-name orchestras in every way: clear and trenchant, with sonorous strings and crisp percussion, this was Bruckner played at the highest possible level. Most outstanding was the brass section: in the Finale, the horns, including the famous Wagner tubas, were strong and assured without ever feeling forced; the trumpets and trombones powerful and penetrating. Manfred illuminated dozens of details and pushed the dynamics to the limit, building incredible tension and release in the crescendos and decrescendos. It was brilliant and majestic, and when it was all over, the audience showered down their appreciation.

I was supposed to leave Pittsburgh on Sunday morning, but after my flight got cancelled due to the NYC blizzard, I decided to make the best of it by riding back into town to attend the third and final performance. This time, I sat downstairs in the Orchestra, where there were plenty of seats to choose from. Wow, what a difference: from there, the music was tremendous, overwhelming, with that “enormous feeling for sound” Manfred spoke of when he played it with Karajan. This performance felt even more impressive that the first: tightly controlled without ever feeling rigid, tingling and terrifying.

In short, this was Bruckner at its best, under the sure hand of a conductor who’s been performing his music for more than 40 years: a fact that was recognized on Saturday, when Manfred received the Bruckner Society of America’s Kilenyi Medal of Honor. What a privilege it is for Pittsburgh to have music of this caliber in their midst. Needless to say, I’m glad I was there to hear it.

Fortunately, everyone will be able to experience this performance next year when the recording comes out, which I imagine will yield yet another Grammy nomination for Manfred and the PSO. Who knows, maybe they’ll even bring it to New York someday, where I look forward to sitting cheek-to-jowl in a packed Carnegie Hall, among concertgoers who know a good thing when they hear it.

More pics on Instagram: Friday and Sunday.