I bet there must have been quite a few sore arms this morning after the performance last night. But then again, our national orchestra are professionals of high calibre and very well practised with their instruments. It was the longest symphony that I have sat through, and also quite the grandest. The composer had pulled out all stops (an appropriate expression to use considering this was a brilliant organist - yes, that to the left is the organ he used to play in the Abbey of St Florian, Austria) and produced something that usually polarizes the audience into lovers and haters rather than fence-sitters. In case you had not guessed, I’m something of a classical (including romantic period) music junkie. It’s better than being on drugs, and to be medicated by music produces only harmless side effects and no toxic ones.

But rather than go into great academic lengths about Anton Bruckner and his distinctive style, I prefer to make some light-hearted observations of last night’s performance in particular. I’m in the lover camp rather than the haters one. No’s 5, 6 and 7 are a nice listening experience, the first movement of No 4 my absolute favourite, but No 8 is quite extraordinary. It is best likened to taking a train journey, sitting there in your window seat and gazing out at the forever changing scenery - valleys, mountain peaks, rivers, towns, farms, lakes, forests, back yards, all kinds of things. Their connectedness is provided by the journey rather than anything much else, and their sequencing somewhat randomized. However, the destination is reached regardless and one can look back on quite an interesting and varied journey. But best of all is the third movement, the Adagio where one encounters “celestial heights” after escaping from Dante’s Inferno.

Last night we had two goes at the Adagio, or rather at the first couple of bars. It is just the most hauntingly beautiful beginning to anything, and just as the orchestra had made its soft and delicate entry into the magic… somebody sneezed. It came from the seats directly at the back to the left of the orchestra, and equalled a grave mishap from the percussion in its magnitude. The conductor stopped the show. Good for him, as it resembled the shock of a disorientated moth darting into one’s soup and floundering there. He held the orchestra in silence for an extra minute, and when the reverberations of the sneeze had faded, we got the opening bars again. Oh Lord, may I never commit such an indiscretion myself. Thankyou for reminding me to put the Strepsils in my pocket.

Sitting three rows from the front I saw more violins than anything else, but a good view under the chair of the leader of the seconds had me watching a most enthusiastic cellist, a woman with short-cropped orangey-coloured hair and looking not too unlike Sir Elton John. I hope she doesn’t ever come across Judah’s Journal and recognize herself written of in this way, but that is what I saw. Not only that, but she threw her whole body into it, leaning forward and bouncing on her seat, sawing her instrument in half with the bow in her fist as though urgently in need of extra firewood for the forthcoming winter. And through a little tunnelled opening past the back of the leader of the seconds, I watched with suspense as the double bass next to her swayed like a gangway in a gale, threatening to topple over. All stops were out for real. The organist in Bruckner had him excel in the sounds he had composed, and the combinations were certainly unique all to himself. No wonder the Brahms camp had hated him. It was hard to fit him into the order of their day.

The lady in the row just in front of me and two seats to the right must have been quite overwhelmed by all of this. I don’t know why people go to orchestra performances just to sit there the whole way through with fingers in their ears. Beats me. Honestly, she took them out only during the brief breaks between movements. Maybe she was really more of a Brahms type but had not realized it.

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Well, eighty minutes of Number Eight was a very satisfying dose for one who pefers her medication in terms of quavers, chords and cadenzas. It is my addiction and my joy, that which brings my soul soaring to celestial heights where angels tend the throne of God. As wrote William Congreve in The Mourning Bride way back in 1697…

Musick has Charms to sooth a savage Breast,
To soften Rocks, or bend a knotted Oak.

Yes, my rock is now truly softened and my knotted Oak quite bendy.