As even its organisers admit, putting on a weekend of concerts devoted to Anton Bruckner — as the Glasshouse music centre (formerly the Sage) in Gateshead is about to do — does seem rather like doing a food festival devoted to Marmite. Born 200 years ago, the Austrian composer wrote nine massive symphonies regarded by his devotees as unrivalled masterpieces of orchestral grandeur and cosmic power — and by his detractors as monumental bores.
I perch in the first camp, mostly. Much more wholeheartedly so does Alpesh Chauhan, the 31-year-old British conductor who will close the weekend with Bruckner’s unfinished (but still enormous) Ninth Symphony — the one that the composer, the most devoted of Catholics, dedicated to his “beloved God”.
“It’s strange for a
