Luogo e data di registrazione		Musikhalle, Hamburg (Germania) - 15 maggio 1995
	Registrazione: live / studio		live recording
	Recording supervisor		Gerald Götze
	Balance engineer		Johannes Kutzner
	Technik/Engineering		Andreas Schulz
	Editing		Suse Wöllmer
	Prima Edizione LP		nessuna
	Edizione CD		SONY [RCA VICTOR Red Seal] - 09026 68452 2 - (1 CD - 55' 07") - (p) 1996 - DDD
	Note		A Co-Production of Bertelsmann Music Croup & Norddeutscher Rundfunk Hamburg

Symphony no. 6 in A major (original version) Bruckner’s originality and modernity could not be fully appreciated during his lifetime, even by his pupils, friends and musical colleagues, let alone by the uncomprehending world at large. The composer, plagued all his life by feelings of inadequacy, was constantly under pressure from well-meaning people to rearrange and shorten his works and even to agree to the deletions and reinstrumentations they proposed. Although intended to promote comprehensibility, such “improvements” actually falsified and distorted the original architecture, dynamics and sound structure. Nevertheless in the innermost core of his artistic self Bruckner was not to be diverted. By and large, having once declared a version of a work to be "valid" he adhered to that version, ensuring that it would be handed down to posterity through unequivocal instructions in his will. Based upon these autographed original scores in the music department of the former Library of the Imperial Court, now the Vienna National Library, Robert Haas was able, between 1932 and 1944, to publish the first complete edition of Bruckner`s works purged of all extraneous influences. Only then was it possible to perceive the full extent to which the idiosyncratic terraced dynamics and register-like orchestration - originating essentially in organ technique - characterize Bruckner`s symphonic writing, obeying laws and tonal conceptions which, despite contemporaneity and personal admiration, diverge in kind from the seductively magical constant state of flux exhibited in Wagner’s tonal palette. Notwithstanding parallels in harmonic structure, Bruckner chose a direction quite distinct from that of the Bayreuth wizard - a fact that his contemporaries, firmly convinced of his being a Wagnerian, simply could not see. Even a man so musically well-versed as Eduard Hanslick heard only the similarities, not the enormous differences. For this reason he attacked Bruckner as a neo-German revolutionary in polemical reviews in which he played him off against Brahms, the upholder of tradition. Bruckner, however, having once chosen a course of action, unerringly pursued it to the bitter end regardless of the consequences. From 1875 onwards he was to devote almost as much time to arranging second and third versions as he did to creating new works. When he died he had heard practically none of his symphonies in the form in which he had composed them: he never heard his Fifth and Sixth Symphonies or the three completed movements of the “Ninth” in any form at all. Bruckner had little to do with fashionable trends and disputing factions. At peace in his deep devoutness, he wrote all his music - not only those pieces expressly dedicated to “the blessed Lord” as the medieval masters and even Johann Sebastian Bach had done, “soli Deo gloria”: solely in honour and praise of God. In the monumental edifices of his overarching symphonic architecture he repeatedly attempted to embrace the totality of the formal and expressive means available to orchestral composition in his time, intensified and enhanced to the ultimate attainable degree of magnitude and sublimity. Each of his symphonic works thus reflects one and the same idea. In consequence, Bruckner’s symphonic oeuvre represents the culmination of an entire epoch in the history of western music in which the purpose and raison d’être of music was seen as deriving from its transcendence, its ability to reflect ethical content in aesthetic terms. For philosopher Ernst Bloch,“the music concerned seems indeed to be part of a mathematical system in the hands of the Almighty.” Bruckner began his Symphony no 6 in A major in August/ September 1879. Completed two years later, the composition was dedicated to Dr and Mrs Anton von Oelzelt-Nevin, Bruckner`s landlord and his wife. Unsatisfactory though the performance may have been, Bruckner did at least live to hear a rehearsal of the entire symphony. In the concert given on February 11, 1883 however, the Vienna Philharmonic performed only the second and third movements, conductor Wilhelm Jahn considering the outer movements impossible. The first complete performance - albeit in an abridged and somewhat reinstrumented version - was conducted by the young Gustav Mahler in 1899. In unabridged form, the work was first heard in Stuttgart in 1901 under the baton of Wilhelm Pohlig. The score published in the same year contained many alterations not stemming from Bruckner. Only in 1934, in the course of Robert Haas’s work on his complete critical edition of Bruckner’s works, were all extraneous additions removed. Paul von Kempen conducted the first performance of the original version in Dresden in 1935 - more than 50 years after the work was completed. ·········· Bruckner’s Sixth Symphony is less frequently performed than his other orchestral works for reasons which can hardly be explained in rational terms. Both the records concerning its conception and the source documents are unambiguous in pointing to there being only one ,,valid“ version, and the work is neither longer nor structurally more complicated than, for instance, the “Fifth” and is no more difficult to perform. On the contrary, its duration is far shorter than that of the “Fourth” or “Seventh” which have become much more popular, and the forces it calls for - doubled woodwinds, four horns and three trumpets and trombones plus a tuba - are in fact modest by comparison. The A major Symphony is the first of the great symphonic works of Bruckner’s late period. Perhaps the reason why this symphony gives a lighter and brighter impression than its predecessor lies in the composer’s successes as an organist during his 1880 tour of Switzerland and in his having been able to experience the première of his “Fourth” in Vienna in 1891 conducted by Hans Richter. Nevertheless, the structural achievements of its predecessor form the foundation upon which this symphony now builds. Whereas the “Fifth” represents an almost violent eruption of radical symphonic genius, the "Sixth" while reflecting perhaps upon natural grandeur experienced high in the Alps, represents anything but a stylistic retreat on Bruckner’s part, and certainly does not depict his dream of “happy country life.” In the formal structure of this symphony he attains a new degree of concentration, eschewing all long-windedness and, in the outer movements and the Adagio, adhering to tripartite thematic architecture. “One cannot but admire” comments R. Kloiber, “the logic employed in the development of the themes, which, despite their differences, exhibit relationships to each other.” The first movement is one of the most organically conceived and formally transparent movements Bruckner ever wrote, being, despite its intricate contrapuntal combinations, festive rather than dramatic and aggressive in character. The transcendental character of the second movement counterpoises the worldly vitality of the first; a relatively short, profound and “very solemn”Adagio is presented in undeveloped sonata form with sophisticated variations. The third movement is of quite special character. Here, Bruckner introduces a completely new type of scherzo into his symphonic repertoire - a scherzo no longer derived from the rustical, ländler-like folk dance. “Demonic and spooky” is Kloiber’s term for the movement, while Kurt Blaukopf and Wulf Konold quite rightly detect in it “virtually impressionistic traits.” In the Trio, alternating between pizzicato violins and the horns, a short motif is to be heard that quite unexpectedly echoes the main theme in the first movement of the Fifth Symphony - an ingeniously incorporated quotation from his own work, with which Bruckner again provides evidence of his creative use of established forms. The thematic material of the final movement, largely derived from the themes in the first movement, is so simple in its architecture that Bruckner might well have intended it to set an example of the ultimate in formal coherence. Naturally, it again incorporates the sonata-form principle, with its three main themes, development, recapitulation and finally a coda ending in the triumphant radiance of the combined main themes of both the first and last movements. The interrelation of almost all the themes in this symphony and their ingenious interweaving by means of motivic combination result in a cohesion between movements ensuring the intellectual coherence of the work, impressively marking a new highpoint in Bruckner’s mastery over his medium. Wolfgang Seifert (Translation: Janet & Michael Berridge)