Christian Thielemann & Vienna Philharmonic - Bruckner: Symphony No. 2 in C Minor, WAB 102 (Edition Carragan) (2022)

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Christian Thielemann & Vienna Philharmonic - Bruckner: Symphony No. 2 in C Minor, WAB 102 (Edition Carragan) (2022)

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In the autumn of 1872 Anton Bruckner – court organist, university professor and a late developer as a composer – had the opportunity to present his Second Symphony to the Vienna Philharmonic. But its conductor Otto Dessoff, who only a few years later was to conduct the world première of Brahms’s First Symphony and who had arranged a run-through of several new works, including Bruckner’s Second, dismissed the symphony as “impossible” and even as pure “nonsense”, a view contested by a number of other members of the orchestra who raised their voices in its defence. And indeed the Vienna Philharmonic did finally perform the symphony at a public concert a year later to mark the official ending of the Vienna World Fair on 26 October 1873 – without Dessoff. Bruckner himself con- ducted the performance, which was financed by a noble patron – at the previous year’s ill-starred rehearsal he had only been allowed to indicate the tempi. “First rejection” he had noted in his diary at that time, as if it was already obvious to him that this was not to be his last such rejection.

But now he could scarcely believe his own good fortune, especially since the audience in the Musikvereinssaal had cheered him after every movement. The very next day he wrote a thank-you letter to the Philharmonic, a model of calligraphy that was both effusive and obsequious in tone: “Even if I may never be able to express a fraction of my gratitude, still less to repay you for what you were kind enough to do for me yesterday in a magnificent display of your supreme artistic abilities, when you may even have outdone yourselves,” Bruckner began circumspectly before adding the prophetic wish, “I would ask you merely not to deprive me now and for all time of your indispensable and incalculable support.” That this would one day be the case he could not possibly suspect. Instead he could only hope that it would be so, especially after the Vienna Philharmonic ignored his second request: “Every father seeks the best possible place for his child, and so you will not, I trust, hold it against me if I do the same and ask you if I may dedicate my work to you?”