Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra Bruckner

The life and works of the Danish composer Rued Langgaard (1893-1952) present one of the odder stories in the annals of classical music. He was a child prodigy of enormous talent who grew into a man of breathtaking fecundity. His music was largely ignored by his contemporaries and was left in a state of near-chaos by the composer himself, as he kept returning to his music, revising and recycling it. The music itself varies from the self-indulgently banal at the bottom end of the scale to the blazingly original and powerful at the top.

Anton Bruckner had to wait an age before bagging his first and greatest success. The Austrian composer’s Seventh Symphony, first performed in Leipzig in 1884 shortly after his sixtieth birthday, proved an immediate hit. Vladimir Jurowski’s visionary interpretation of the work with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, recorded live at the Berlin Philharmonie, stands as the utterly compelling outcome of the conductor’s profound study and long experience of performing Bruckner’s music. He’s backed to the hilt by superlative playing, remarkable for its intense focus, lyrical warmth, and jaw-dropping beauty.

Anton Bruckner had to wait an age before bagging his first and greatest success. The Austrian composer’s Seventh Symphony, first performed in Leipzig in 1884 shortly after his sixtieth birthday, proved an immediate hit. Vladimir Jurowski’s visionary interpretation of the work with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, recorded live at the Berlin Philharmonie, stands as the utterly compelling outcome of the conductor’s profound study and long experience of performing Bruckner’s music. He’s backed to the hilt by superlative playing, remarkable for its intense focus, lyrical warmth, and jaw-dropping beauty.

Karl Weigl’s music demonstrates once again that the great Austrian/German symphonic tradition did not die with Mahler, but continued to thrive well into the 20th century. Weigl (1881-1949) worked under Mahler in Vienna and enjoyed a fine reputation until, as we’ve heard often by now, the Nazi seizure of power, which forced his emigration to America where he died in comparative obscurity. He nevertheless composed a substantial body of orchestral and chamber music, including six symphonies. If this one is typical, it’s a legacy that urgently calls out for wider exposure. Composed in 1945 and dedicated to the memory of President Roosevelt, the “Apocalyptic Symphony” received its premiere in 1968 under Stokowski.

Though it lacks a first movement, the 1944 Karajan Bruckner Eighth is both a notable performance and an astonishing piece of engineering. The finale, which was recorded in the studios of Berlin Radio in September 1944 in experimental 'two channel' sound, has occasionally been available on LP or CD, though never in such spectacular sound. For what we have here, as I understand it, is not the reproduction of a rough dubbing of the original mastertape but a transfer from the 30ips mastertape itself, part of a recently released hoard of tapes the Russians confiscated after the fall of Berlin in 1945. As for the second and third movements, recorded in mono towards the end of June 1944, these have never previously been released.

Riccardo Chailly is a dynamic and sometimes controversial conductor known for his devotion to contemporary music and for his attempts to modernize approaches to the traditional symphonic repertory. His many recordings for the Decca label include modern masterworks by Zemlinsky, Hindemith, and Schnittke, the symphonies of Gustav Mahler, and a number of operas.

Riccardo Chailly is a dynamic and sometimes controversial conductor known for his devotion to contemporary music and for his attempts to modernize approaches to the traditional symphonic repertory. His many recordings for the Decca label include modern masterworks by Zemlinsky, Hindemith, and Schnittke, the symphonies of Gustav Mahler, and a number of operas.