Bruckner

Renaissance polyphony and contemporary sound clouds orbit around vocal late Romanticist like satellites. The Zurich Chamber Singers, conducted by Christian Erny, unearth a special narrative drama. Starting with Anton Bruckner, they turn their attention to Palestrina as a point of reference. At the same time, they cast a spotlight back on the work of the Austrian vocal innovator through three contemporary works. A comprehensive selection of Bruckner's Latin motets combined with chosen works by Palestrina and three world premiere recordings of the Stuttgart composer Burkhard Kinzler’s commissioned works

SOMM Recordings announces Bruckner from the Archives, a major new, six-double-CD-volume series celebrating the 200th anniversary of Anton Bruckner’s birth in 1824.

The air shimmers and glows, and somewhere in the mists, a solitary horn gives a lonely call. The stuff of fairytales? The truth is, it’s impossible to write about Bruckner’s majestic Fourth Symphony without letting the imagination soar; he never wrote anything more colourful, or more poetic. In Germany, they call it the ‘Romantic’ symphony, and it’s easy to hear why.
Sir Simon Rattle loves Bruckner’s Fourth, and on this new recording from LSO Live, he conducts the work in all its splendour: music that never gets any less stirring, and has never sounded so fresh.

The Munich Philharmonic have arguably given more performances of Anton Bruckner’s music than any other orchestra. A great number of Bruckner recordings led by the many legendary conductors that have worked with the Munich Philharmonic are stored in the historical archive of the MPHIL Label including magnificent pieces with Sergiu Celibidache, Christian Thielemann, Rudolf Kempe, Günter Wand and Oswald Kabasta.

The Munich Philharmonic have arguably given more performances of Anton Bruckner’s music than any other orchestra. A great number of Bruckner recordings led by the many legendary conductors that have worked with the Munich Philharmonic are stored in the historical archive of the MPHIL Label including magnificent pieces with Sergiu Celibidache, Christian Thielemann, Rudolf Kempe, Günter Wand and Oswald Kabasta.

The Munich Philharmonic have arguably given more performances of Anton Bruckner’s music than any other orchestra. A great number of Bruckner recordings led by the many legendary conductors that have worked with the Munich Philharmonic are stored in the historical archive of the MPHIL Label including magnificent pieces with Sergiu Celibidache, Christian Thielemann, Rudolf Kempe, Günter Wand and Oswald Kabasta.

Although conductor Daniel Barenboim made his name with brilliant, sometimes controversial symphonic cycles of Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, and Schumann, he has always had a special connection to the symphonies of Anton Bruckner. He’s recorded the cycle several times—first with the Chicago Symphony in the ‘70s and ‘80s and later with the Berlin Philharmonic. Yet, conducting Bruckner with the powerful Berlin Staatskapelle, Barenboim is sublime, endowing the works with a spiritual depth, colorful drama, and a gorgeous flood of emotion. There's particular magic in this recording of the eighth, which manages to gracefully rise from the lush, slow movement to the brassy drama of the finale.

This series to mark the 200th birthday of Anton Bruckner in 2024 is dedicated to his symphonic works. Hansjorg Albrecht will perform all of Bruckner's symphonies in many new transcriptions for organ at important locations such as Zurich, Leipzig, Linz, Vienna and London.

In 1974, Carlo Maria Giulini and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra recorded Anton Bruckner's Symphony No. 2 in C minor for EMI, an unusual selection for the time but one the conductor had chosen among a number of core works he wished to interpret with this orchestra. The Bruckner's Ninth dated from 1976, with Chicago Symphony Orchestra, is among the finest ever recorded. The CSO's brass players were born to play Bruckner, and Giulini combines toughness with an Italianate singing quality to make the third movement particularly memorable and elegiac.