Reviews

Vast and spaciously laid out, the symphonies of Anton Bruckner ill fit our age of instant messaging, sound bites and short attention spans. The Seventh Symphony's slow movement alone lasts longer than many a classical-period symphony.

But abandon yourself to the timeframe of a composer whose sights were set on eternity, and a great performance can thrill with grandeur and religious ecstasy, enchant with intimacies and gentle joy.

All those qualities were wonderfully alive in the Dallas Symphony Orchestra's Thursday night performance of the Bruckner Seventh. In the final program of the classical season, guest conductor Günther Herbig triumphantly scaled the music's heights but also savored its confidences.

Both individual phrases and whole movements were surely proportioned and shaped. Climaxes, with great tectonic plates of trumpets, trombones, bass tuba, horns and Wagner tubas crashing across the rest of the orchestra, were hair-raising. But delicate hushes were hardly less amazing.

An organist as well as composer, Bruckner often seemed to write even orchestral music for great cathedral spaces. The Meyerson Symphony Center is the rare concert hall with the reverberation to let huge chords linger, breathtakingly, into Bruckner's dramatic rests – almost four seconds this time. It's a chills-down-the-back effect.

Apart from an occasional spot where violins wanted more finesse, the orchestra played gloriously. Massed violas and cellos purred luxuriously, and those treacherous Wagner tubas (lower-voiced relatives of French horns) were played with assurance.

The program opened with as different a piece as could be imagined, Schumann's Konzertstück for four horns and orchestra. Gregory Hustis, Nicole Cash, Haley Hoops and Paul Capehart delivered playing by turns exhilarating, boldly sculpted and extruded in golden strands of tone. If this wouldn't put a smile on your face, nothing would.

PLAN YOUR LIFE Repeats at 8 tonight and Saturday at the Meyerson Symphony Center, 2301 Flora. $17 to $108. 214-692-0203, www .dallassym phony.com.

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