Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra

Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, Jaap van Zweden – Anton Bruckner: Symphony No. 1 (2015)
DSF Stereo DSD128/5.64 MHz | Time – 51:20 minutes | 4,05 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: nativeDSDmusic | Booklet, Front Cover |  © Challenge Records

Anton Bruckner, born in the Austrian village of Ansfelden on 4 September 1824, first worked as assistant schoolmaster at an unsightly school in an equally unsightly hamlet not far away called Windhaag, near Linz. When he took his last breath on 11 October 1896 as one of the greatest composers Austria ever produced, in a tiny chamber (Kustodenstckl) of the Viennese palace of Belvedere that had kindly been placed at his disposal by the imperial court, the finale of his Ninth Symphony was well under way but still unfinished. Although the rapid advance of industrialisation has made great incursions here and there on the Upper Austrian landscape, and although the ravages of time have eaten away at the integrity of Bruckner’s Lebensraum, there are still more than enough sites to be found which could certainly have formed a backdrop to his early symphonies. In that sense, listening to the First Symphony is a trip of discovery through Bruckner’s countryside, within the triangle formed by Ansfelden (birthplace), St. Florian (with its famous Stift, where Bruckner, first as a choirboy and later as a mature musician, found the much-needed distance from the workaday world to play the extremely beautiful organ) and lastly Linz, with its majestic Cathedral, where Bruckner held the not inconsiderable post of organist until 1868. The powerful organ tones, with their unsuspected force, would be heard like glorious sound pillars in his symphonic epos.

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Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, Jaap van Zweden – Anton Bruckner: Symphony No. 6 (2013)
DSF Stereo DSD128/5.64 MHz | Time – 57:14 minutes | 4,51 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: nativeDSDmusic | Booklet, Front Cover |  © Challenge Records

In the early days of the symphonies history, there was nothing like the meticulousness of our approach to Bruckner’s work. On February 26, 1899, Gustav Mahler gave in Vienna the first performance of the Sixth, in his own version, in which he substantially reworked both the instrumentation and notes and showed no aversion to sweeping cuts. The first printed score of Bruckner’s Sixth appeared in the summer of 1899, however it deviated greatly from the original work. Largely responsible for this was Josef Schalk (1857-1900), a highly respected conductor in Vienna and an early Bruckner admirer (Bruckner often referred to him as “Herr Generalissimus”). Did Bruckner ever hear his “keckste” composition performed? That cannot be answered with any certainty.
We know that during a concert in Vienna on February 11, 1883, the Vienna Philharmonic performed only the Adagio and Scherzo, conducted by Wilhelm Jahn, but the composer possibly heard the complete symphony during the rehearsals — or perhaps in or around October 1882 during the orchestra’s

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Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, Jaap van Zweden – Anton Bruckner: Symphony No. 3 (2013)
DSF Stereo DSD128/5.64 MHz | Time – 59:33 minutes | 4,69 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: nativeDSDmusic | Booklet, Front Cover |  © Challenge Records

Bruckner – Symphony no. 3 Anton Bruckner meticulously noted it in his calendar: autumn 1872, first rejection of the performance of the Third Symphony in Vienna; autumn 1875, second rejection; September 27, 1877, third rejection. Thanks to the efforts of his good friend Johann (von Ritter) Herbeck (who had conducted the premiere of Schubert’s “Unfinished” Symphony), Vienna’s Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde decided to programme the work on December 16, 1877, the second concert in the Gesellschaft series. Herbeck was to conduct the Vienna Philharmonic for the occasion in the “Golden Hall” of Vienna’s Musikverein. On October 28, however, Herbeck unexpectedly died, putting the premiere in doubt. That same evening, Bruckner sought the support of the influential Reichstag delegate and later Bruckner biographer August Gllerich, a close friend of Nikolaus Dumba, the Gesellschaft’s president. His efforts paid off, and the performance of the Third Symphony was saved. Alas, no conductor could be found who wanted to perform the work, so Bruckner, who was not used to leading an orchestra, took on the — to his mind, thankless — task. The results were predictable. Already in the rehearsals, things started going wrong. The orchestra’s musicians showed scant respect for the poor composer. They sabotaged the proceedings by intentionally playing out of tune and weaving odd notes and ornaments into the music. They stubbornly refused to repeat certain phrases and repeatedly laughed at Bruckner to his face. The great composer was the helpless conductor who baptized one of the most impressive compositions in music history in an exceedingly unpleasant atmosphere created largely by notorious troublemakers. Aside from the unfortunate rehearsals, other aspects of the concert were unfavourable for Bruckner: before the intermission, Joseph Hellmesberger conducted a programme that, to put it mildly, was excessively long: Beethoven’s Egmont Overture and the Violin Concerto in D minor by Louis Spohr followed multiple arias from Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro and Peter von Winter’s Das unterbrochene Opernfest (already largely forgotten). Were that not enough, there was Beethoven’s Meeresstille und glu?ckliche Fahrt before Bruckner could present the Third Symphony.

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Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra,Jaap van Zweden – Anton Bruckner: Symphony No. 8 (2012)
DSF Stereo DSD128/5.64 MHz | Time – 01:19:24 minutes | 6,26 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: nativeDSDmusic | Booklet, Front Cover |  © Challenge Records

Despite the big differences between them, there is a certain kinship between Bruckner’s ‘official’ nine symphonies (the ones he decided to call ‘valid’): the broadly expansive themes with their lengthy build-up of tension and the expectant tremolo of the strings (first introduced by Beethoven in his Ninth Symphony) at the beginning, from which the main theme wells up. Bruckner often gives the singsong, sometimes distinctly lyrical second theme a contrapuntal second voice. The third theme, on the other hand, is often monolithic, full of clenched energy, that bursts out in unison and goes on to develop a huge rhythmic force. Then there are the long drawn-out Adagios with their heavenly cantilenas and the starkly contrasting, waggish Scherzos, almost smelling of earth. They are all just as characteristic of Bruckner’s compositions as the broadness of the codas in the outer movements, introduced by a soft roll of the timpanis. But despite the similarities, all his symphonies are fundamentally and completely different and are certainly not interchangeable. This can be said of each of the movements separately and of the entire work.

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