Symphony No. 1 in C minor

"The final two releases from this huge recording project are now available, and they continue to document performances of genuine stature. Tintner is a very understanding conductor of Bruckner, and he secures committed performances from the Scottish orchestra for these seldom-heard pieces¡ The Scottish orchestra plays responsively, and Tintner shows that he knows the craggy corners of Bruckner's writing in ways that elude most conductors. This recording-indeed, Tintner's entire Bruckner cycle-is highly recommended, not to mention that it comes at a low price."
- STATE (William W. Starr) March 18, 2001

"One of the bonuses of the late Georg Tintner's Bruckner cycle with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra is the conductor's sleeve notes. For this disc, he explains lucidly the differences between the revised version (1877) of Symphony No 1, usually performed today, and what listeners heard at the first performance in Linz in May 1868, recorded here. These are mainly in the finale, where several passages are completely changed. Tintner points out that even this score (1866) is not the totally original version-there is an unfinished version of the second movement and a 'more interesting' discarded scherzo from before 1866. Anyway, what we hear is a splendid symphony, thoroughly Brucknerian and owing more to Schubert than to the exaggerated Wagner influence. The performance is superb and the disc includes a hitherto unknown 1976 version of No 3's Adagio, longer than the 1877 revision and superior in beauty of orchestration."
- The Sunday Telegraph (Michael Kennedy), Sept.24, 2000.

"This is the first recording of Bruckner's first score for his First Symphony. The first three movements vary little in comparison with the final published version, but the finale is a different matter, with whole chunks that are unfamiliar. Here it comes across as brash, young man's music, with odd exploratory passages recalling the harmonic adventures of Berlioz or Liszt, though the path to those great edifices of granite that close later Bruckner works is already clear. The performance is excellent, though occasionally, at moments of high exposure, the upper string tone falters. The late Georg Tintner lends an impressive richness and clarity to the texture: his pacing and phrasing have a natural easiness. A recently discovered version of the Adagio of the Third Symphony makes a fascinating filler."
- The Sunday Times (Stephen Pettitt), August 13, 2000

A mediaeval artisan might easily have kept a daily record of how many different prayers he prayed and how often he repeated them. For a composer of the nineteenth century, with its belief in unstoppable progress and human supremacy, to behave in this fashion is certainly unique. But Anton Bruckner, though accepting the harmonic and orchestral achievements of the Romantic period, did just that; he did not really belong to his time. Even less did he fit in with the Viennese environment into which he was transplanted for the last 27 years of his life. The elegant and rather superficial society he encountered there must have thought the naive, badly dressed fellow with the 'wrong' accent a rather pathetic oddity.

Bruckner had indeed come from a very different background. The little village in Upper Austria, Ansfelden, where his father was a schoolmaster, was not far away from the great and beautiful monastery of St Florian. The young Bruckner followed in the footsteps of his father for a short time; but St Florian possessed one of Europe's finest organs, and young Anton, whose talent for music was discovered early, became an organist. The experience of hearing and playing this magnificent instrument became central to his whole life. He spent many hours there, practising and improvising, and eventually his playing was so exceptional that he made successful tours of France and England as an organ virtuoso. He had lessons in theory and composition, and started composing fairly early in life, but he felt the need for more instruction in counterpoint and became for several years a most diligent pupil of the famous Simon Sechter, visiting him every fortnight in Vienna. Many years earlier and shortly before his death, Schubert had also wanted to study counterpoint with Sechter, but of course he was wrong; most of his life work was already done, and works such as his early Mass in A flat showed him in no need of such lessons.

Sechter forbade Bruckner to compose a single note in order to concentrate entirely on his innumerable exercises, and here Bruckner, who had in the meantime advanced to the post of organist at Linz Cathedral, showed one unfortunate trait of his character, perhaps acquired as an altar-boy: utter submission to those he considered his superiors. He obeyed. But when he had finished his instruction with Sechter and took lessons with the conductor of the local opera, Otto Kitzler, who introduced him to the magic world of Wagner, music poured out of him. Now forty, Bruckner composed his first masterpiece, the wonderful Mass in D minor, followed by two other great Masses, and Symphony No. 1. His reputation reached Vienna and he was appointed to succeed Sechter as Professor of Music Theory.

Bruckner had ample reason to regret his move from Linz to Vienna. He, the fanatical admirer of Wagner, was innocently dragged into the rather silly conflict between the followers of Brahms and those of his beloved Wagner. So he made many enemies, most cruel of whom was the critic Eduard Hanslick, whom Wagner caricatured as Beckmesser in Die Meistersinger. But though adversaries did him harm, his friends and admirers hurt his works much more. All his young students were gifted Wagnerians and they thought Bruckner's music needed to sound more like Wagner, and that it needed other 'ministrations' such as large cuts as well. They considered their beloved Master to be a 'genius without talent'.