Skrowaczewski shows no signs of slowing down

Retirement doesn't seem to be in Stanislaw Skrowaczew-ski's vocabulary. The world-renowned conductor turned 87 last month, and even though he has some health issues and problems with his sight, he hasn't yet cut his work schedule too drastically.

In fact, he probably has almost as many guest engagements as someone 30 years his junior.

"I have been terribly busy," Skrowaczewski told the Deseret News recently in a phone interview from his home outside Minneapolis. "The last three months have been especially crazy."

That's probably an understatement. Skrowaczewski started the 2010-11 season in September conducting the Frankfurt Radio Symphony. Later that month he led the Bruckner Orchestra in St. Florian, Austria, in its namesake's Fifth Symphony. And two weeks ago he conducted the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra in Japan.

And this coming weekend, the venerable conductor will return to Salt Lake City to lead the Utah Symphony in Anton Bruckner's Ninth Symphony, a work that he has recorded three times in his career.

"It is one of the four or five greatest symphonies ever written," he said.

Also on the same program will be J.S. Bach's motet "Jesu, meine Freude," BWV 227, performed by the Utah Chamber Artists.

It seems that every time Skrowaczewski has conducted the Utah Symphony, it's been in large-scale works. His last appearance here was in Bruckner's monumental Eighth Symphony, and before that he conducted Ludwig van Beethoven's Ninth. "It just happens that they ask me to do these works," he said, "but I like it. I like doing large works by Beethoven, Bruckner and Brahms."

As for Bruckner, the Austrian composer's music has been an integral part of Skrowaczewski's repertoire "since ever, since I was born." And he considers most of them to be among the greatest works in the symphonic literature. "Starting with the Fifth, these are all amazing works."

It's become popular to compare the symphonies of Bruckner to a majestic Gothic cathedral. It seems a fanciful analogy, but Skrowaczewski doesn't mind. In fact, he agrees. "They are as magnificent as a building or as a continent," he said. "They are massive but structurally sound."

Bruckner died before completing the Ninth. Even though he began sketching a finale, he didn't live long enough to finish it. But Skrowaczewski compares Bruckner's unfinished symphony to another, and perhaps more famous, one — Schubert's unfinished Eighth in B minor, of which he only completed the first two movements.