Your most reverend Mr. Doctor Bruckner!
May I be so free as to write to Hochdenselben, even if I immediately abandon the tone you would have used in a letter, entirely in keeping with your time and yet different, as if we were speaking to each other: We would probably have recognized each other immediately by our dialect. Oh, how happy you would be if you knew how many artists have created and continue to create pictures from you to this day. In many constitutions you look at us, in, on and in front of houses, not only in Upper Austria. You can be found in Vienna’s Stadtpark as well as in the Vienna Musikverein. You are famous! Does that reassure you? Culture is not a statue, but a movement, and this is triggered in all its possible directions by the celebrations for your birthday in your home country. Bruckner is the bridge builder, Anton has already inscribed the sound in his name, which will become the program at the first Upper Austrian KulturEXPO: In the forest, in concert halls, theaters or churches[1], on swings, town squares, in Bruckner streets or virtual areas, the whole of Upper Austria will become a stage of the present for people young and old, music enthusiasts, walkers, Bruckner nerds, those hungry for knowledge or lovers of the unexpected. They mediate, network, break down boundaries and open the door to the world! You can’t even imagine the variety of ways in which we celebrate you and engage with the present. Your encounter with the Wilhering monkey will be the subject of a play, and a State Prize winner has created a sound forest for you. A composer named Wagner, not Richard, but David, will cycle for weeks to all the Bruckner roads in the country and collect themes from your symphonies. Wagner is on his way to you, not the other way around. In the Old Cathedral, a brand new church opera called „Findling“ was created around you. There are exhibitions in Ansfelden, St. Florian, Linz, Kronstorf, Steyr and even in Vienna. The Bruckner Orchestra Linz – yes, there is a great orchestra that bears your name – plays all the symphonies and recorded them in all versions and won the European Music Oscar for it! All the great orchestras play your symphonies. And people all over the country are rocking on the SCHORGEL, an organ playground. You are a true bridge builder, a pontifex musicus maximus.
On September 4, your 200th birthday, we will celebrate for 24 hours: in the morning, the Bruckner Orchestra Linz under Markus Poschner will play her „Te Deum“ and the „Ninth“. In the evening, the Cleveland Orchestra and Franz Welser-Möst come to Ansfelden to perform the „Romantic“.
Music is the solution anyway, a friend always reminds me, yours in particular. Thank you for that, dear Doctor!
Yours sincerely
