Bruckner's 8th

1. Grateful to God and all that helps me get through a day.

2. Grateful for upcoming vp debate and Katie Couric's interviews of the vp's. One question she asked was what the best and worst things that Dick Cheney did. SP said it was good he supports our troops and bad he shot that guy. JB said DC is good at getting things done and bad because he shredded the constitution.

3. Grateful for the Cleveland Orchestra.

We are off to the symphony on Nov. 22. It is to be the Cleveland Orchestra doing Bruckner's 8th, a work I have not heard in concert before. I can hardly wait.

The work is not without controversy. As shown in wikipedia, when the work was first performed, the well known critic (E. Hanslick) left after the slow movement. His review described the symphony as "interesting in detail, but strange as a whole, indeed repellent. The peculiarity of this work consists, to put it briefly, in importing Wagner's dramatic style into the symphony." (wikipedia notes that this was less negative than Hanslick's reviews of Bruckner's earlier symphonies).

There were also many positive reviews from Bruckner's admirers. One anonymous writer described the symphony as "the crown of music in our time". Hugo Wolf wrote to a friend that the symphony was "the work of a giant" that "surpasses the other symphonies of the master in intellectual scope, awesomeness, and greatness".

Herbert Blomstedt is to be the conductor. Wikipedia points out an interesting observation that he is a Seventh-day Adventists. He does not rehearse on Saturdays, the sabbath of the Seventh-day Adventist. He does perform concerts on Saturdays as he does not consider this to be work.