Tor on Marathon

Whilst the Title could easily cover one of my marathons it actually hints to the linked video of the legend conductor Celibidache and the Berliner Philharmonics performing the 7th Symphonie of Anton Bruckner. Do open the video in a new window (music starts at 1.40 minutes), sit back, close your eyes and listen. Listen ! (and ps: the recording is amazing, the 2. satz being the most beautiful… another interpretation is by Furtwängler below).

Both Celibidache, Furtwängler and Brucnker are long gone. Dead. One day we will be too… and all our efforts, experiences, feelings, memories and stories will come to an end, perhaps remembered for a while by a handful of people and then with them turn into forever dust. Gone and absorbed into the great cycle of time and matter. We only pay a short visit, really. But it is a delight to think that this music and these tunes will continue to exist, continue to thrill and enlighten new generations to come, to inspire and to guide.

With the flux of these tunes through the body and out of my arms and hands, I lift my entire life and snapshot every memorable moment against a blue sky and relive eons and eaons again, compressed and contained in a second or two. I dissolve into light and shine so brightly that all History blinds. I become Atlas, carrier of the World, I become the creator and vitness of all times and destinies from birth to grave, lifting villages to Empires and see the rise and fall of Civilizations. All this bursts into one übermoment in Time.

Then all is black.

So it seems that I have at last passed my two-year long “Bach-phase” and is entering a Bruckner (and perhaps Mahler ?) phase. The Bruckner Symphonies are SO haunting, so powerful and so majestetic that only the tunes themselves justify such words. Listen up !

The long-draggged crescendoes have been snugged into many a motion-picture soundtrack, Avatar being one of the latest on the list, and you could say that these symphonies emulate all big stories in life or each of our lifestories, ups and downs, loveaffairs, tragedies. The beauty and struggles of a marathon could also be told by each of the pieces.. well.. I guess we could make whatever context befitting.

My favorites just now would be Bruckner no. 4, 7 and 8, the latter the by far loudest and perhaps most well-written of all the Symphonies of Bruckner. Go explore yourself !