Luogo e data di registrazione		Alte Oper, Frankfurt (Germania) - gennaio 1990
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Producer / Engineer		Wolfgang Mohr - Hans Bernhard Bätzing / Detlef Kittler (HR)
	Prima Edizione LP		-
	Prima Edizione CD		Teldec - 2292-46330-2 - (1 CD) - durata 44' 06" - (p) 1990 - DDD
	Note		Co-Produktion mit dem HR Franfurt.

In 1895 - a year before he had moved to the apartment in the Belvedere and before his dedth - Anton Bruckner took a critical look of the musical products of his youth, and destroyed quite a number of manuscripts in the process. The posthumously published Symphony in D minor (WAB 100), which appears in the literature as "no. 0", was one work that escaped this auto-da-fé. After Bruckner's death, and in accordance with his wishes, his executor Dr. Reisch gave the Upper Austrian Museum in Linz the manuscript score to look after, and it has been kept there ever since. The manuscript bears the title "Symphony no. 2 in D Minor" as well as numerous notes in the composer's own hand that make it quite clear that he himself rejected the work. "Symphony no. 0", for example, wos his own designation, and he refered to the symphony as "rejected", with individual movements being dismissed as "invalid" or "null and void". August Göllerich, the definitive authority on Bruckner's biogroahy, was the first to voice the opinion - arousing considerable attention - that the composer wrote "no. 0" in 1863/64 after he had completed his composition studies with Otto Kitzler. He supported his theory with a comment of Bruckner‘s to the effect that the work had been composed in Linz. The many remarks added to the outograph manuscript, however, show that the symphony - at least in the version that has come dovvn to us - was written partly in Linz and partly in Vienna, in 1869. - Or, to be more exact, between January and September of that year. The confusion surrounding the posthumously published D minor symphony seems to have arisen to a large extent from its title of "no. 0". After Max Auer, Bruckner himself referred to the work thus in 1895, in order to make it clear that it was composed before the work known today as his First Symphony. The somewhat strange designation was intended to ensure that it was fitted into the right place, chronologically. But one must not glass over the fact that this is actually a false interpretation, for the term "no. 0" is not to be understood in a chronological sense, but refers rather to the composer's rejection or annulment of the work. With this extraordinary classification, Bruckner was expressing his reluctance to include the work in the series of symphonies which he regarded as "valid" - nine others in all. Notwithstanding, "Symphony no. 0" is a Brucknerian work through ond through, and beers the unmistakable signature of the composer. It should under no circumstances be considered a student work. It differs substantially, it's true, from the First Symphony, in layout, in character, in certain individual features, and in both the thematic structure and development. But this does not mean that it represents on earlier stage of the composer's development than the First. It's surely of particular importance that many characteristics of "no. 0" point forward to the Third and even the Ninth Symphony - two works with which it shares more than just the same key. Bruckner appears to have mode contact with the leading musicians in Vienna shortly after he moved to the city on the Danube, and to have shown them some of his works.The First Symphony, composed in 1865/66, appeared particularly daring to them. Bruckner confessed to Hans von wolzagen much later that he had "been given quite a start” in his early days in Vienna. August Göllerich reports thot he had the "Symphony no. 0" played privately at the beginning of his time in Vienna. The presiding court Kopellmeister, Otto Dessoff, commented on the lack of a pronounced first subject, and asked Bruckner in some bafflement, "Where's the subject, then?" The composer apparently replied, "Well, I didn‘t really have the courage to write down a proper subject any more". Dessoff‘s objection is understandable when one bears in mind the fact that the musical construction that opens "no. 0" is highly original in every respect. Bruckner produces a weaving surge of sound thaot circumscribes a diminuendo-crescendo arc and then actually attains a crescendo at the second attempt. Recent observations have placed the "Symphony no. 0" in a new light. Connections hitherto overlooked with the F minor Mass that Bruckner wrote in Linz in 1868 prove that "no. 0" was not drafted and worked out until 1869, i.e. after the First Symphony. These connections can only be properly appreciated when one bears in mind that Bruckner made many new discoveries while working on the Mass, and had broken new ground in every respect. When he started work on "no. 0" om 24th January 1869, he was still under the spell of the F minor Mass, especially of the highly dramatic music of the Credo. A study of the first movement and the andante of "no. 0" reveals that the composer now transferred the musical ideas that he had developed while working on the Mass to the symphonic sphere in part. Thus we find in the first movement of the symphony - as in the section of the Credo that depicts the Resurrection, the Ascension, the Second Coming and the Last Judgment - agitated build-ups, ostinato figures in the strings, ostinato rhythms in the trumpets and prominent signal-like motifs in the brass parts. And the andante has a religious, even devotional character. Characteristically enough, the second thematic complex of the movement is designed after a model that Bruckner first tried out in the Et incarnatus est from the Credo of the F minor Mass. The Scherzo and the finale of the symphony, incidentally, are also marked by many original features. If we look at the "Symphony "no. 0" in retrospect, it seems to represent a preliminary stage on the way to the Third Symphony. The relationship between the two works is that between a draft and a fully evolved and mature composition. By the time he had completed the first version of the Third Symphony in 1873, at the very latest, Bruckner must have seen "no. 0" as an outmoded stage of his own development as a composer. Thus it was only logical that he should reject the D minor Symphony as a mere "experiment". Constantin Floros Translation: Clive Williams