Program booklet for the event
Bruckner's symphonies in their original sound
Deifying
Anton Bruckner began composing Symphony No. 9 in D minor on 12 August 1887, only two days after he had (initially) completed the 'Eighth'. The fact that he was unable to complete it until his death on 11 October 1896 was due less to old age or a waning of his creative powers than to a good three-year interruption in work on the new work, during which he subjected four of his symphonies to a fundamental revision. Shortly before his death, Bruckner is said to have confided to his doctor that he wanted to dedicate the 'Ninth' "to the dear God" in the hope "that he will give me so much time" to "complete it". The three-movement torso that he left the symphony as at the end pushes forward to the limits of tonality through the "unrestrained unleashing of the harmonic centrifugal forces" and thus opens wide the door to 20th century music.
The monumental fragment is combined with Wolfgang Amadé Mozart's Symphony No. 41 in C major, which the concert organiser Johann Peter Salomon, probably at the beginning of the 19th century, gave the nickname "Jupiter" to express the almost divine perfection of this symphonic masterpiece, which has never been surpassed.
Wolfgang Amadé Mozart (1756–1791)
Symphony No. 41 ("Jupiter") in C major, KV 551 (1788)
– Intermission –
Anton Bruckner (1824–1896)
Symphony No. 9 in D minor, WAB 109 (1887-94)
Les Siècles
Jakob Lehmann | conductor