Ernst Ludwig Leitner’s premiere thrilled audiences at the Brucknerhaus in Linz

The doyen of Upper Austrian composers, Ernst Ludwig Leitner, celebrated his 80th birthday on October 14th. Reason enough to receive one of the highest awards in the country and to be able to present a new major work. That’s what happened on Friday in the Brucknerhaus in Linz at the “AK Classics” concerts, where “… and the song remains beautiful”, a powerful cantata for choir and orchestra based on Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Book of Hours” by the Bruckner Orchestra and the opera choir of the Landestheater Linz was baptized.

At the podium was the former chief conductor of the orchestra and state theater, Martin Sieghart, who dealt intensively with the complex score and not only revealed in finely chiselled ways the links to Anton Bruckner’s big anniversary next year, but also revealed a lot of romanticism in the work in its great sonority could win. At the center are three tones that can be interpreted as a reversal of the theme of the Amen fugue from the Gloria of Bruckner’s E minor Mass, but at the same time can also be seen as the initials of the two composers that can be translated into tones: ABE.

A compositional approach that is typical of Ernst Ludwig Leitner’s oeuvre. Starting from this nucleus, he builds an impressive work about life and death at the interface between the memory of long-faded youth and the hope that at the point of the end of life, people will not lose themselves in nothingness, but will instead find themselves in the everlasting “beautiful song” can delight.

The opera choir under Elena Pierini mastered the challenging task very finely, scored with great sound in the forte and impressively staged the tones. The text fell a little by the wayside, especially since the organizers neglected to print it in the program booklet. Because then many positions would be developed even more intensively than they already have been.

The Bruckner Orchestra, who played the work with great commitment and intensive sound design, Bettina Leitner-Pelster with their highly virtuoso performance on the organ and Martin Sieghart, who directed the perfect sound and modeled the work in an exemplary manner, also contributed to this.

At the beginning, Weber’s “Freischütz” overture was a model work for the entire 19th century, which influenced not only the dedicatee, Bruckner, but also his bitter opponent Johannes Brahms. In the second part, he performed a convincingly interpreted and superbly played second symphony.

Conclusion: Great new work, ideally placed in the context of its tradition and origins.