Bruckner's symphonies in their original sound
Delimitation

After completing the String Quintet in F major, Anton Bruckner began work on his Symphony No. 6 in A major in August 1879. He completed this on 3 September 1881, one day before his 57th birthday, in St. Florian, to where he had travelled at the beginning of August. It was from here also that he left for Linz to visit "the folk festival associated with an exhibition" . Although he was able to hear the symphony on 6 October 1882 at a rehearsal of the Vienna Philharmonic, at which the musicians, as he reported in a letter to his friend, Leopold Hofmeyr ,from Steyr, "applauded him vigorously and banged the cymbols together loudly", only the middle movements were premiered in Vienna on 11 February 1883, which is why Bruckner did not revise the work. The fact that the entire symphony was not performed in public until after his death is all the more astonishing given that, despite its variety of forms, it is a true "miracle of control and concentration" .

The three-movement Symphony in D minor was composed between 1886 and 1888 by César Franck. He was only two years older than Bruckner and a famous organist. In France he was regarded as the successor to Ludwig van Beethoven. He made the phrase from the String Quartet No. 16 in F major from Ludwig von Beethoven, which was underlaid with the question "Must it be?" , the motivic nucleus of his masterpiece.

With this fascinating programme, the renowned original sound ensemble, Les Musiciens du Louvre,  which is now in its 43rd year of existence, turns for the first time to one of Bruckner's symphonies, with which its founder and director, Marc Minkowski, has been intensively involved for some time as a sought-after and celebrated guest conductor of orchestras playing on modern instruments.

César Franck (1822-1890)

Symphony in D minor, FWV 48 (1886-88)

- Intermission -

Anton Bruckner (1824-1896)

Symphony No. 6 in A major, WAB 106 (1879-81)

Les Musiciens du Louvre

Marc Minkowski | Conductor