Almost inaudibly, timid string sounds detach themselves from the silence: Bruckner's Eighth begins like a whispered secret slowly unveiled. Time seems to stand still as the symphony builds almost unbelievably to an overwhelming ecstasy. That requires a conductor with a masterful command of long arcs of tension. Someone like Lahav Shani, "thoroughbred Brucknerian," according to NRC, "grand, hot-blooded, shimmering."