Bruckner: Symphony No. 7 in E Major

Herbert von Karajan (1908–1989) was one of the greatest conductors of the twentieth century. Born in Salzburg, he made his debut with the Vienna Philharmonic in 1934. In 1946 Karajan gave his first post-war concert in Vienna with that orchestra, and in 1949 he became artistic director of the city’s Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde. He also conducted at La Scala in Milan, but his most prominent activity at this time was recording with the newly formed Philharmonia Orchestra in London, helping to build them into one of the world’s finest.

In 1955 he was appointed music director for life of the Berlin Philharmonic as successor to Wilhelm Furtwängler. From 1957 to 1964 he was artistic director of the Vienna State Opera. Karajan was closely involved with the Vienna Philharmonic and the Salzburg Festival. He continued to perform, conduct and record prolifically until his death in 1989, mainly with the Berlin Philharmonic and the Vienna Philharmonic.

This 2CD set preserves the exact concert that took place at the Royal Festival Hall on 6 April 1962, including the British and Austrian national anthems.

It is sourced from the Music Preserved archive.

The combination of Karajan and the Vienna Philharmonic playing Mozart and Bruckner drew a ‘packed and raving audience’ according to Neville Cardus in The Guardian.

The Bruckner Symphony No.7 received great acclaim from the Daily Telegraph, with a review headlined ‘Noble Height in Bruckner: Vibrant Vienna Philharmonic’, and the critic Donald Mitchell writing ‘London has not heard a Bruckner performance of this quality for years’. Mitchell went on to add that the music-making was ‘undoubtedly touched by interpretative genius’.

In his booklet essay, Richard Osborne notes that ‘the performances of both Mozart and Bruckner are quicker here than any of Karajan’s studio performances … they are also freer in places and given to a number of astonishing build-ups of power’.

The first symphonic work by Mozart that Klemperer ever conducted was K.550. The Kölnische Zeitung noted that his use of a reduced string section emphasised the dark aspects of the score and the work was played ‘con espressione, yet with a translucency and a rhythmic and dynamic finesse in the true classical style’. His 1956 recording of the symphony for EMI drew praise from Gramophone magazine’s conductor/critic Trevor Harvey – ‘for me easily the most satisfying recorded performance. I wouldn’t want a bar altered anywhere. The Philharmonia give Klemperer the most lovely playing, especially in the quiet string tone...’. In later years Klemperer liked to couple the Mozart G minor with Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony (soon after this 1965 London concert he gave the same programme in Hamburg, his mother’s birthplace). He had first conducted the Bruckner in 1921. It became a work that he used to champion the composer’s music where it was less known and which he liked to perform for his own début engagements in Europe and America. After a concert with the New York Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra in 1927 the critics rejected the music but noted drily that Klemperer was applauded ‘as, it is safe to say, no conductor of a Bruckner symphony has ever been applauded in New York’. Much the same story (appreciative audience, hostile critics) repeated itself in Rome in 1931 and in London.

In February 1958 Klemperer returned to the Symphony in Vienna where the concert began with another of his Mozart favourites, the A major Symphony K.201. The critics, thrilled that Klemperer could now conduct standing up – recovery from a hip operation had kept him seated for a decade before, built up a romantic picture of triumph over physical adversity and, for the Bruckner Seven, bordered on the ecstatic. One writer recalled how Klemperer was actually named in Thomas Mann’s Dr Faustus novel as composer Leverkühn’s conductor of choice for the première of his Apokalypse. Others hailed his ‘great deeds’, ‘style of interpretation which made the music into a spiritual power’, his awareness of ‘music’s highest sense, its role as a spiritual discipline’ and his handling of the symphony as ‘song-like, full of streaming lyricism and powerfully shaped climaxes’.

Hyperion is delighted to present Donald Runnicles, chief conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, in his debut on the label. Runnicles commands his orchestra in Bruckner’s most popular symphony—repertoire that is at the heart of his musical life, and in which he has few living equals. Recent concerts of the works of Bruckner and Wagner have received the highest critical praise, acknowledging the orchestra and their conductor as consummate performers of this music.

‘For an orchestra who hadn’t played Bruckner 7 since 1975, the BBCSSO sounded utterly on home territory. From the sumptuous opening cello theme to the finale’s noble fanfares, this was a spacious, tender and beautifully poised performance … it’s not often you hear cries of “encore” after a Bruckner symphony, but I would gladly have heard this one repeated in full’ (The Guardian)

Franz Welser-Möst's first Bruckner performance at the Salzburg Festival was justly celebrated in 1989. He conducted the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra in the Seventh Symphony, in an interpretation by these young performers that was astonishing in its transcendence and in its manner of outlining the work’s musical contrasts. It was no surprise that the press greeted the conductor and the orchestra as a sensation and as a great hope for the future – it was also, after all, the first Festival “after” Karajan. Those hopes were later confirmed, and Welser-Möst and the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra have since then returned to Salzburg on a regular basis.