Gewandhausorchester Leipzig & Andris Nelsons - Bruckner: Symphony No. 4 / Wagner: Lohengrin Prelude (Live) (2018)

2018 will be branded as “Gewandhausjahr”: Gewandhausorchester celebrates its 275th birthday and the inauguration of Andris Nelsons as new Gewandhauskapellmeister.

Andris Nelsons’ latest release with the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, featuring Bruckner’s Symphony No. 4 and the Prelude to Act 1 from Wagner’s Lohengrin, was recorded live in concert and is the second installment in a multi-album Bruckner series on the Deutsche Grammophon label.

Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony is known as his “Romantic” Symphony. Bruckner himself chose this term after starting work on it in January 1874. “The music gives us an insight into Bruckner’s psyche and allows us to sense what he was feeling and thinking at the time of the work’s composition,” says Nelsons, and there is no denying that the symphony’s musical language is unusually personal and intimate.”

Andris Nelsons brings youthful energy, fluidity and rhythmic impulse, while still leaving room for Bruckner’s music’s monumental sound blocks that gives these works a completely new flavour.

By including selected instrumental works by Wagner in the Bruckner Symphony Cycle, his idea is to demonstrate the influences but more importantly their differences, for clearly the two men could not have been more disparate in character.

This second ambitious long-term recording project is consciously combined with the production of DG’s first complete Shostakovich cycle that Andris Nelsons is recording with the Boston Symphony Orchestra which has already been awarded with two Grammys as well as various other awards.

Tracklist:
01. Wagner: Lohengrin, WWV 75-Prelude To Act I (Live)
02. Bruckner: Symphony No.4 In E Flat Major-"Romantic", WAB 104-Version 1878/1880-1. Bewegt, nicht zu schnell (Live)
03. Bruckner: Symphony No.4 In E Flat Major-"Romantic", WAB 104-Version 1878/1880-2. Andante quasi allegretto (Live)
04. Bruckner: Symphony No.4 In E Flat Major-"Romantic", WAB 104-Version 1878/1880-3. Scherzo (Bewegt)-Trio (Nicht zu schnell. Keinesfalls schleppend) (Live)
05. Bruckner: Symphony No.4 In E Flat Major-"Romantic", WAB 104-Version 1878/1880-4. Finale (Bewegt, doch nicht zu schnell) (Live)

Personnel:
Gewandhausorchester Leipzig
Andris Nelsons, conductor