Bruckner's symphonies in their original sound
Liberate

Just three weeks after completing his 'Sixth', Anton Bruckner began composing the Symphony No. 7 in E major on September 23, 1881, which he completed in St. Florian on September 5, 1883, like the first work. Although the influential critic Eduard Hanslick later spoke disparagingly of a "giant symphonic snake", the work soon began its triumphal march, earning the 60-year-old the recognition he had long sought as a symphonist. His most famous movement, the Adagio, in which Bruckner used the so-called Wagner tubas for the first time and which has audible references to "Siegfried's Funeral March" from Götterdämmerung - Bruckner had become acquainted with the entire Ring of the Nibelung during his visit to the Bayreuth Festival in 1876 - was described by him as "funeral music (in memory of the master's passing)" under the impression of Richard Wagner's death on February 13, 1883.

Ernest Chausson's three-movement Symphony (No. 1) in B flat major, composed in 1889 and 1890, is in many respects a comparable document of the composer's self-liberation and eventual detachment from his previously overpowering role model Wagner. Its 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 expert and electrifying direction of its founder Jérémie Rhorer, continues its now internationally acclaimed exploration of Bruckner's work, which began at the International Brucknerfest Linz 2020, and also gives a milestone in the history of French symphonic music its first hearing at the Brucknerhaus Linz.

Ernest Chausson (1855-1899)

Symphony (No. 1) in B flat major, op. 20 (1889-90)

- Pause -

Anton Bruckner (1824-1896)

Symphony No. 7 in E major, WAB 107 (1881-83)

Le Cercle de l'Harmonie

Jérémie Rhorer | Conductor