Bruckner: Symphony No.4 in E-flat Major, WAB 104 (Edition Haas)

Album review

Like his illustrious Bruckner colleagues of the past, Eugen Jochum, Günter Wand and Bernard Haitink, Christian Thielemann has performed one version after another of the great Viennese symphonist's works. No sooner had he completed his fine Bruckner concert series with the Dresden Staatskapelle than he was making a new recording for Sony Classical of the Fourth Symphony, the "Romantic", performed at the 2020 Salzburg Festival, this time conducting the Wiener Philharmoniker. This Fourth follows the Third & Eighth Symphonies from the same publisher. Before that there was also Symphony N° 5 with the  Munich Philharmonic (2005, Deutsche Grammophon), to add to a very fine Seventh with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra published by the Berlin phalanx's own label as part of a boxed set of Bruckner's nine symphonies performed by several conductors.

Not always easy to follow... but when you love Bruckner you don't keep count, especially as he is one of the German conductor's favourite composers, and of whom he refines his vision of the nine masterpieces year after year. This new complete set, which will be the first by the Viennese with just one conductor, should be completed in 2024 on the occasion of the bicentenary of the birth of Anton Bruckner, who is increasingly popular with conductors around the world. The days when his music seemed abstruse and interminable are far behind us.

Over time, Christian Thielemann's baton, if not his eruptive character, has softened and become more personal. He no longer seeks to follow slavishly in the footsteps of the great German conductors of the mid-twentieth century, finding his own style, a mixture of grandeur and powerful warmth, with fairly measured tempos that allow the music to breathe in all its plenitude. This new cornerstone in the immense Brucknerian edifice is firmly rooted in the German tradition and at the same time exploits the inexhaustible resources of the Viennese musicians, with whom Thielemann seems to be in perfect harmony. © François Hudry/Qobuz