Bruckner's symphonies in their original sound
Liberate
Less than three weeks after completing his 'Sixth', Anton Bruckner began composing Symphony No. 7 in E major on 23 September 1881, which, like the former, he completed in St. Florian on 5 September 1883. Although the influential critic Eduard Hanslick later spoke disparagingly of a "giant symphonic snake", the work soon began a triumphal march that brought the already over 60-year-old the long-awaited recognition as a symphonist. His most famous movement, the Adagio, in which Bruckner used the so-called Wagner tubas for the first time and which is audibly related to "Siegfried's Funeral March" from the Twilight of the Gods - Bruckner had become acquainted with the entire Ring of the Nibelung during his visit to the Bayreuth Festival in 1876 - he called it "funeral music (in memory of the passing of the master)" under the impression of Richard Wagner's death on 13 February 1883.
A comparable document in many respects of compositional self-liberation and final detachment from Wagner's previously overpowering role model is the three-movement Symphony (No. 1) in B-flat major by Ernest Chausson, composed in 1889 and 1890, whose slow middle movement has the character of a confessional lament, while the finale echoes the music from Parsifal intended for Klingsor.
With this concert, the outstanding original sound orchestra Le Cercle de l'Harmonie, under the knowledgeable and electrifying direction of its founder Jérémie Rhorer, continues its internationally acclaimed exploration of Bruckner's work, which began at the International Brucknerfest Linz 2020, and also makes a milestone in the history of French symphonic music heard for the first time at the Brucknerhaus Linz.
Ernest Chausson (1855–1899)
Symphony (No. 1) in B flat major, op. 20 (1889-90)
– Intermission –
Anton Bruckner (1824–1896)
Symphony No 7 in E major, WAB 107 (1881-83)
Le Cercle de l’Harmonie
Jérémie Rhorer | conductor