Joh Wick 4 2023

After the tremendous success of the 7th Symphony, François-Xavier Roth and the Gürzenich-Orchester Köln continue their Bruckner complete symphonies cycle. The "Romantic", as Anton Bruckner himself entitles his 4th Symphony, was composed in 1874 in the midst of a period of personal defeat. And he immediately doubted his work, describing some parts as "unplayable" and finding "the instrumentation here and there overloaded and too turbulent". It was only years later, after numerous revisions, that the Fourth was premiered and Bruckner achieved the success he had longed for with the public of the time.

New Jersey-born George Antheil traveled to Europe in 1922 determined to become 'noted and notorious' as a pianist-composer, soon gaining a reputation as the 'bad boy of music' with works such as the infamous Ballet mecanique. The first three violin sonatas come from this period, with the eclectic Violin Sonata No. 1 displaying the fiercely barbaric influence of Stravinsky, and the more jazzy No. 2 developing experiments in 'musical cubism'. His Violin Sonata No. 3 achieves a synthesis of Stravinskian rhythms and Antheil’s more song-like tendencies, while the later No. 4 is built on Classical and Baroque models.

Wolfgang Sawallisch was a German conductor and pianist, known for his refined interpretations of orchestral and opera repertoire. As a pianist, he was a revered accompanist and chamber musician, as well as an accomplished soloist. He was born in 1923 in Munich to Maria and Wilhelm Sawallisch, and had a brother named Werner who was older by five years. He started learning the piano at age five, and by the age of ten he had already decided that he wanted to be a concert pianist as an adult. Upon graduating high school in Munich in 1942, he studied piano with Wolfgang Ruoff until he was drafted into the military, where he served in France and Italy with the Wehrmacht, a branch of the Nazi armed forces. During the final stages of World War II in 1945 he was captured and held in a British POW camp. After he was released, he returned to Munich and began studying with composer Joseph Haas.

“When I play, I am not presenting myself on the stage, but the music I am playing. It is the music that matters.”- Elisabeth Leonskaja