Forbes Classical CD Of The Week: Bruckner's End In Salzburg

…The 2014 Salzburg Festival featured all the Bruckner Symphonies, and the Ninth with Christoph von Dohnányi and the Philharmonia Orchestra was the best of the lot. (See ionarts review: Notes from the 2014 Salzburg Festival ( 9 ) Anton Bruckner Cycle • Bruckner IX.) Happily, the occasion transferred nicely onto CD. Christoph von Dohnányi leads an absolutely controlled performance that awes with its opening: the orchestral voices are perfectly separate but with finely rounded edges, and these blocks of sound emerge organically from the most subtly, softly shimmering carpet of strings. This, and the Philharmonia’s sonorous, warm sound which featured glorious brass and a daring, happily thwacking timpanist, made this the most immediately emotionally appealing of the Bruckner Ninths I have heard in concert. The competition on record is fiercer, but this Ninth is on par with the very best. Certainly on my “Almost List” of 2016 that will accompany my “Best Classical Recordings of 2016” lists. The accompanying Four Last Songs in that concert (with Camilla Tilling and an inspired concertmaster) were just as stunning. Another release worth hoping for?…

-> Classical CD Of The Week: Bruckner's End In Salzburg

Anton Bruckner, Symphony No.9, Philharmonia Orchestra, Christoph von Dohnányi (conductor), Signum