Christian Thielemann & Wiener Philharmoniker Bruckner

Christian Thielemann's groundbreaking Bruckner cycle with the Vienna Philharmonic continues with Bruckner's Fifth in Edition Nowak. Sony Classical releases the Symphony No. 5 in B flat major WAB 105 (in the 1878 version from Edition Nowak), the fifth part of the complete recording of all Bruckner symphonies with the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Christian Thielemann, the orchestra's first Bruckner cycle under a single conductor. "The claim that this orchestra is basically the only true original-sound ensemble for Anton Bruckner's music should remain undisputed," enthuses Die Presse. The Vienna Philharmonic gave the first performance of four of Bruckner's nine symphonies. Since the premiere of the Second Symphony in 1873, they have maintained a special relationship with the music of the Austrian composer.

In the autumn of 1872 Anton Bruckner – court organist, university professor and a late developer as a composer – had the opportunity to present his Second Symphony to the Vienna Philharmonic. But its conductor Otto Dessoff, who only a few years later was to conduct the world première of Brahms’s First Symphony and who had arranged a run-through of several new works, including Bruckner’s Second, dismissed the symphony as “impossible” and even as pure “nonsense”, a view contested by a number of other members of the orchestra who raised their voices in its defence. And indeed the Vienna Philharmonic did finally perform the symphony at a public concert a year later to mark the official ending of the Vienna World Fair on 26 October 1873 – without Dessoff. Bruckner himself con- ducted the performance, which was financed by a noble patron – at the previous year’s ill-starred rehearsal he had only been allowed to indicate the tempi. “First rejection” he had noted in his diary at that time, as if it was already obvious to him that this was not to be his last such rejection.

Anton Bruckner's Symphony No. 8 in C minor is the last symphony the composer completed. It exists in two major versions of 1887 and 1890. It was premiered under conductor Hans Richter in 1892 in Vienna. It is dedicated to the Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria.This symphony is sometimes nicknamed The Apocalyptic, but this was not a name Bruckner gave to the work himself.

Sony Classical releases the second installment of Christian Thielemann’s complete cycle of Anton Bruckner’s symphonies with the Vienna Philharmonic – the orchestra’s first Bruckner cycle under a single conductor.