London Symphony Orchestra

Music is for Sofia Gubaidulina the “most important form of resistance of mankind against spiritual decline”. Her religiously influenced works were included on the “black list” in the Soviet Union. After the end of communist censorship, Gubaidulina relocated to a small village close to Hamburg where she remained for the rest of her life. In its “deepest sense”, music is a type of divine service according to the composer whose creative activity constantly revolved around spiritual issues. This is also evident in her Concerto for Viola and Orchestra performed here by the London Symphony Orchestra’s principal viola player, Eivind Ringstad. The composer comments: “I have always found the innate mysterious and veiled tone of the viola an enigma.”

Anton Bruckner was also deeply religious. He spent longer working on the unfinished Ninth Symphony than on any other work (his sketches for the final version were scattered in all directions by souvenir hunters and autograph collectors). Whether the responsibility lay with Beethoven’s legacy, the key of D minor from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony or the symbolic meaning of the number nine (three squared symbolising ultimate perfection), of which Bruckner with his mystical belief in the power of numbers was of course aware, is uncertain. The “solemn” first movement begins mysteriously, as if out of nothing, but is an existential experience that soon swells to monumental levels. The scherzo with a ghostly trio is followed by one of the most beautiful adagios that Bruckner ever wrote: transfiguring sounds that the composer called his “farewell to life”.