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CBSO, Symphony Hall

Jan 19 2008 By Paul Fulford

THE music of Bruckner is to understatement what Dawn French is to anorexia. He is a composer not given to restraint.

Sometimes this leads to music that is flabby and aimless. But sometimes there is unbridled emotion and searing passion.

Bruckner's ninth symphony, his last and unfinished despite its near hour-long duration, has plenty of examples of both the composer's vices and his virtues.

It is a tribute to the vision of the conductor Yannick Nezet-Seguin and the musicianship of the orchestra that it is the peaks which will remain in the memory.

Dramatic splashes of dark tones, tension, passages of grandeur and the work's dying, resigned breaths marked this out as an intelligent and powerful account.

Earlier the hues were much lighter as the young American soloist Jonathan Biss gave us a gripping performance of Beethoven's third piano concerto.

This was a performance of the highest order that charmed, moved and enlightened.

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