He makes you feel what it feels like to be alone at the top. Whoever sees and hears him suddenly knows more about the search for the right path that drives every serious person. His stage characters touch the heart. The bass Günther Groissböck embodies kings, scholars, philosophers in the great opera houses of the world; he plays priests, mythical creatures, gods. You could say he specializes in solitary figures.

At first glance, however, Günther Groissböck does not seem like someone who has personal experience with the subject of loneliness. The singer stands, works, acts on and off stage in intensive contact with people. He is married, father of a daughter, in the middle of life or, as conductor Philippe Jordan puts it: “He burns for many things in life, not only for art”. Can you play what you don’t know? How does he shape his stage characters? What are the building blocks for the play? When does the instrument, his voice, touch the audience? How much public spirit, how much individuality does an opera singer need today? And where does Günther Groissböck get the incredible energy he radiates on stage?

For two years we accompanied the artist from Waidhofen an der Ybbs (Lower Austria) with our camera, on night journeys and day trips. At rehearsals, sports, and performances. We filmed him as the black-robed Kaspar, as the powerful King Philip, or as a searcher in the villa of Richard Strauss. The result is a film portrait that tells of a special attitude to life; of loneliness as a source of artistic strength; of a man who can fill his voice with content from within. The film about Günther Groissböck tells of two lines from a Rückert poem, set to music by Gustav Mahler: “I live alone in my heaven, in my loving, in my song.”

Anton Bruckner finally received the award of an honorary doctorate of the University of Vienna on 11 December 1891. For Bruckner, receiving the doctorate fulfilled a long-time wish. He had spent most of his life pursuing academic credentials and applied for honorary doctorates at Cambridge University in 1882 and at the Universities of Pennsylvania and Cincinnati in 1885. Two days later, Hans Richter conducted the Vienna Philharmonic in the first performance of the second or so-called “Vienna” version of the composer’s First Symphony, which he had dedicated to the university in gratitude for the degree. The changes Bruckner made in the revised version of the First Symphony are not as extensive as those he made to the Third, Fourth, and Eighth Symphonies during the late 1880s and early 1890s. His revisions to the First Symphony did not affect the overall form of any of the movements. He changed many details of orchestration, articulation, and phrase length, some of which are difficult to notice on first hearing. The 1891 autograph score is, nevertheless, the composer’s final word on how he wanted his First Symphony to be performed and understood.

In addition to his symphonies, Anton Bruckner is best known for his sacred works: his stirring masses and his deeply moving a cappella motets. On this new BR-KLASSIK CD, to mark the Bruckner Year 2024, the Bavarian Radio Chorus and the Münchner Rundfunkorchester conducted by Peter Dijkstra present his Mass No. 2 together with five well-known motets and the two short Aequali for three trombones from 1847. The new studio recordings were made in connection with the opening concert of the 2023/24 season on October 28, 2023. On a second CD, "Bruckner's World" by Markus Vanhoefer offers not only an introduction to the recorded works but also a detailed description of the life and work of this important Late Romantic composer.

After Bruckner's uncommissioned Mass (No. 1) in D minor had brought him to the attention of a wider public – following its premiere on November 20, 1864 in the Old Cathedral in Linz and a repeat performance in the city’s Redoutensaal – Bishop Franz Joseph Rudigier commissioned a second mass from the composer. Bruckner wrote the work between August and November 1866, and it was to be premiered at the consecration of the Votive Chapel of the New Cathedral; due to delays in the construction work, however, the performance could not take place until September 29, 1869. The premiere of the Mass (No. 2) in E minor for eight-part mixed choir and wind ensemble was also a great success, and Bruckner described it as “the most glorious day” of his life. The unusual instrumentation was due to the occasion and the open-air performance venue on the cathedral building site (the new chapel had proven too small for the choir). The work derives its particular tension from the sharp contrasts between archaic, psalm-like monophony and a strictly polyphonic movement structure modeled on Palestrina, combined with the "modern" wind accompaniment in sweeping, romantic harmony.

Bruckner thoroughly revised the Mass (No. 2) between 1876 and 1882, and the premiere of the second version in the Old Cathedral on October 4, 1885, as part of the Diocesan Jubilee in Linz, was once again an outstanding success. The composer "stood at the organ during the performance and gazed rapturously at the vault of the cathedral, his lips moving in silent prayer."

Bruckner's sacred motets are characterized by Catholic worship and the church spaces that were Bruckner's home from childhood. In 1837, at the age of 13, he was admitted as a choirboy to the Augustinian canons' monastery of Sankt Florian near Linz, where he worked as an organist from 1848 to 1855. His religious devotion and early influence meant that he initially saw himself as a church musician, before broadening his scope to include symphonic music - in whose sound architecture the organ also found an audible echo.

Anton Bruckner 200 (1824-2024)

A wide-ranging selection of Anton Bruckner's sacred works for choir and brass ensemble is presented by the NDR Choir Hamburg under the direction of Hans-Christoph Rademann.The pieces extend almost chronologically over 50 years, allowing the compositional development of this deeply religious composer to be traced.

“Since Beethoven, nothing has been written that even comes close!”

The great conductor Arthur Nikisch made this remark to Bruckner’s former student, Joseph Schalk and also his fellow conductor, Hermann Levi, described the piece as “the most significant symphonic work since Beethoven’s death.”

Arthur Nikisch conducted the first performance in the Stadttheater, Leipzig, on 30 December 1884, with Bruckner in the audience. While the performance was not a total triumph, it brought the sixty-year-old composer significant international recognition for the first time. During the composer’s lifetime, the Seventh, especially its Adagio, was his most popular symphony, and it remains among his most beloved and frequently performed works.

The two pianists, Julius Zeman and Shun Oi, have made an exquisite and historic contribution to the Bruckner Year 2024 – celebrating the 200th birthday of the great symphonist by recording Anton Bruckner's Seventh Symphony in a version for two pianos. Some music lovers may ask in surprise, "For two pianos, not for piano four hands?" However, anyone who, like me, has heard the version for two pianos in a performance – on two Bösendorfer concert grand pianos, performed by the two pianists on this recording – will not find the answer difficult. The volume of sound that a symphony by Anton Bruckner unfolds in its orchestral form has a magnificent, even overwhelming effect, and something of this sonic power must also be conveyed by the piano version if it is not to do without a constitutive feature of this music. I was convinced by the live impression of the performance on two pianos: it truly sounded like "Bruckner," and I could only place the deep and moving impression of this performance alongside the best orchestral performances.

— Dr. Thomas Leibnitz

REVIEW:

Bruckner’s symphonies don’t easily lend themselves to piano reductions. The problem largely lies within the composer’s long stretches of string tremolos. If one literally replicates these effects on the piano, they sound like the worst clichés of silent movie accompaniments and grow instantly tedious. However, in their world premier recording of Hermann Behn’s two-piano Seventh Symphony arrangement, Julius Zeman and Shin Oi successfully circumvent the problem by subjecting the tremolos to altered dynamics, speeds and articulations. This ensures more textural variety, and makes it easier for the pianists to focus on the contrapuntal foreground. Their tempo fluctuations in the first movement have an organic ebb and flow, allowing for assiduous transitions and for themes to take full shape.

Shifts in color and balance beautifully demarcate the Adagio’s harmonic twists and turns. It’s all too easy for even the best pianists to get bogged down while approaching the big C Major climax, yet Zeman and Oi avoid this by minimizing accented downbeats with their eyes and ears on the long lines. They bring more cogent horizontal interplay to the Scherzo than in many orchestral performances, abetted by a moderate basic tempo. And the pianists bring impressive timbral character to the Finale’s themes; note, for instance, the mellifluously voiced chorale against the warmth of the detaché bass lines in octaves. The sonics are a tad dry for music that calls out for a more resonant ambience, but that matters little in light of the pianists’ excellent ensemble values and intelligent music making. Naturally one shouldn’t be without a recording of the orchestral original, but if you want to hear Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony on two pianos, look no further.

— ClassicsToday.com (Jed Distler)

The production of the CPO series A Different Bruckner under the conductor Mario Venzago concludes with a recording of the composer's Symphony No. 5 in B flat in its 1878 version. + This interpretation of the Fifth may make feelings run even higher than they have so far with Mr. Venzago's previous Bruckner renderings because, as he himself writes, “The present reading does almost entirely without the song element and instead establishes musical discourse. + The orchestra speaks and debates as if the instruments were the members of a parliament engaged in serious, sober, and brilliant discussion.”

This release joins the nearly complete, sensational interpretations of the Bruckner’s symphonies by the Swiss conductor Mario Venzago. “A Bruckner edition bringing unheard-of and previously unheard things to light… Nobody can afford to neglect this way of viewing Bruckner.” -Christoph Jetzschke (klassik-heute.com) + “It is the eighth symphony’s genuinely opulent orchestral ensemble that makes it an exception, for here the otherwise so very conservative Bruckner actually calls for harps, even ‘if possible, three’ such instruments… [and] percussion instruments (cymbals and the triangle)! Until this time no symphonic work without programmatic ties had contained these tone colors deriving from the opera orchestra.” -Hartmut Becker

“Venzago amazes us with his idiosyncratic and wholly novel performances of Bruckner. The sound of his Bruckner is thrillingly lean...His intelligent conducting focuses our attention on the chamber-music aspect of Bruckner's music.” –Pizzicato. In this Vol.2, Venzago devotes himself to the beginnings of Bruckner's symphonic output, the so-called “No. 0” and the 1st.

Bruckner’s Third Symphony had always been something of a problem child among Bruckner’s symphonies, from its disastrous first reception (an enthused youthful Gustav Mahler notwithstanding) until well into the 20th century. In its original form, it is the longest, most Wagnerian of his symphonies – and often considered, rightly or not, the first truly Brucknerian symphony. While some cherish the uncompromising originality of the first version, Bruckner himself wanted the third, much tightened Edition performed, finding it “incomparably better”. It is that final version that is here recorded – and listeners can now easily decide for themselves.

SOMM Recordings announces Bruckner from the Archives, a major new, six-double-CD-volume series celebrating the 200th anniversary of Anton Bruckner’s birth in 1824. Conceived and designed by SOMM Executive Producer and acclaimed Audio Restoration Engineer Lani Spahr with support from the Bruckner Society of America, the series features rare archival recordings of Bruckner’s 11 symphonies and selected other important works, many appearing for the first time in any form.

Recordings have been sourced from the more than 11,000 Bruckner performances in the Archive of John F. Berky, Executive Secretary of the Bruckner Society of America, who also acts as Consultant for this important series.

Across the series, authoritative notes by Professor Benjamin M. Korstvedt, Jeppson Professor of Music at Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts, President of the Bruckner Society of America and member of the Editorial Board of the New Anton Bruckner Complete Edition, trace Bruckner’s life and compositional development from the Symphony in F minor (1862) to the unfinished Ninth Symphony (1894).

Volume 1 (SOMM 5025) will be released on 15 March 2024 and includes two Symphonies: in F minor (Bruckner Orchestra, Linz conducted by Kurt Wöss) and No.1 in C minor, ‘Linz’ (Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Eugen Jochum); Bruckner’s only String Quartet (Koeckert Quartet); Psalm 112 (Vienna Akademie Kammerchor, Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Henry Swoboda); the Overture in G minor (WDR Symphony Orchestra, Cologne, Dean Dixon); the March in D minor, and Three Pieces for Orchestra (Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Hans Weisbach).

Future volumes include never-before released performances conducted by noted Brucknerians Eugen and Georg Ludwig Jochum, Eduard van Beinum, Volkmar Andreae, Christoph von Dohnányi, Herbert von Karajan, and Joseph Keilberth. Lani Spahr’s previous SOMM releases include the lauded four-volume sets Vaughan Williams Live (ARIADNE 5016, 5018-20) and Elgar Remastered (SOMMCD 261-4), and a Gramophone Editor’s Choice for “superb audio restorations [bringing] performances fully to life” for Elgar from America, Volume 3 (Ariadne 5015-2).

By his own reckoning, Bruckner began his career as a professional composer when he was thirty-nine years old. With a mere exercise for a symphony under his belt – the unnumbered one in F minor – he was now ready to write his first true symphony. The world was not. First performed in 1868 in Linz – badly – the work flopped and was put aside until nine years and five symphonies later, when it was gently adjusted. A subsequent performance in 1884 was Bruckner’s “most successful Viennese performance to date”, prompting, perplexingly, a thorough revision that would be the 1891 “Vienna” version. This recording uses the unadulterated 1868 “Linz” version.

Among Bruckner’s Symphonies, the Fifth is his contrapuntal masterpiece; the grandest until the Eighth. The tour-de-force of a finale gives us an idea of what the finale of the Ninth might have been like. Its magnificent dark and halting opening with the descending bass line – so effectively recalled in the finale – is inimitable. Although long available only in a disfigured version by Franz Schalk, it is also distinct for never having been the subject to revision or, perhaps, even doubt on the part of Bruckner – who never heard it performed with an orchestra. And yet, when Bruckner wrote this masterpiece, he was still far from establishing himself as a composer in Vienna and his spirits were as low as ever, writing a friend that “my life has lost all joy and delight – in vain and for nothing.” A radiant pinnacle from amid darkness.

"What nonsense”, grumbled Otto Dessoff after a read-through (to determine its repertoire-worthiness for the Vienna Philharmonic) of Bruckner’s Second Symphony. This doomed the work to a life of revision. The first version was written in 1871 when the Second was still the Third Symphony because the Zeroëth, then still the Second, hadn’t been annulled yet. Despite Bruckner managing a well-enough regarded premiere of this version, he set about to rework it during his period of revision in 1877 where he and his eager helpers set about to radically trim any perceived fat. The result, which we know as the second version, changed most in the Finale, where a full 193 bars were pruned. This version follows Bruckner’s cuts unflinchingly which cannot, however, alter the Symphony’s expansive proto-Brucknerian structure first heard here. And then that marvelous Adagio in this lyrical sister of the First Symphony!