Mariss Jansons dirigiert Anton Bruckner (CD, Br-Klassik)

Anton Bruckner’s symphonies were a constant in the repertoire of Mariss Jansons and his Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. The existing recordings of almost all of the great Bruckner symphonies offer important documents for his understanding of the work, and the long Bruckner tradition of the BRSO has contributed significantly to the high musical quality of these recordings. Jansons followed the scores meticulously; Listening to a recording with the score reveals again and again how true to the letter and note he has rehearsed these works with the musicians of his orchestra. Bruckner’s symphonies are the backbone of the late Romantic symphonies. To a certain extent, he reinvented the genre of the symphony, which after Beethoven’s pioneering masterpieces, which were understood as the climax and the finale, no one else had dared: not Liszt and not Wagner. It was only Bruckner and (a little later) Brahms who looked for and found new approaches to reviving and developing the genre. Bruckner’s approach was completely new: he relied on the sound of the large orchestra from the outset, whereby he did not mix the individual groups of instruments, but rather separated or coupled them according to the type of organ stops (which he as an organist were well familiar with). Bruckner also derived the terrace dynamics, the direct juxtaposition of piano and forte without transition, from organ music. These and other elements of baroque music, with which he had close contact as a church musician, have flowed into his symphonies.