Luogo e data di registrazione		Alte Oper, Frankfurt (Germania) - 29-30 gennaio 1987
	Registrazione: live / studio		live
	Producer / Engineer		Heinz Henke - Heinrich J. Weritz / Hans Bernhard Bätzing - Michael Bramann - Detlef Kittler (HR)
	Prima Edizione LP		Teldec - 6.43619 AZ - (1 LP) - durata 48' 05" - (p) 1987 - Digitale
	Prima Edizione CD		Teldec - 8.43619 ZK - (1 CD) - durata 48' 05" - (p) 1987 - DDD
	Note		Co-Produktion mit dem HR, Franfurt.

The history of music is full of grotesque figures. One only has to think of Alkan, Liszt’s great contemporary, who chose to live in eccentric seclusion; one only has to think of Gesualdo, who according to bourgeois conceptions was not only a composer but also at the same time a perfectly conventional murderer of two people; one only has to think of Liszt, who in the course of his phases of religious mania managed to work his way up to the position of Abbé - the list could be continued ad libitum. However, none stood apart in his time so remarkably, none moved into the limelight so late in life, at the same time resenting such an irresolvable contradiction to his epoch, no intellectual personality was so shadowy, so unbelievably helpless as Anton Bruckner. His personality becomes all the more enigmatic when one takes into account that he was deeply moved by the derision, laughter and jokes directed at him by his environment, but that he still could not in any way be dissuaded from systematically continuing his creative work. Bruckner was a naive character, anything but a man-of-the-world, but much as one would like to, one cannot claim that he had not developed any intellectual capabilities. For his unbelievable gift for construction and combination in his symphonic works cannot merely be explained away as blessed instinct. But in Bruckner’s case, as opposed to that of his colleagues, the element of mental keenness expressed itself without doubt and to an unusual extent quite differently: It found its expression solely in compositional work. This fact makes it so difficult to recognize where the limits of inspiration and dialectic work are to be found. There has probably never been a composer who developed in such an unbelievably persistent way, at the same time so slowly. The continuity with which this process took place significantly illuminates at the same time that which is possible in the mental sphere: In the history of music the hundreds of composer child prodigies are confronted by Bruckner as the only adult prodigy, or rather: almost an “old man prodigy”. Bruckner wrote 11 symphonies altogether. He himself described the first one in F minor dating from 1862 as “school work”, and another one in D minor (“ Symphony No. 0”) dates from 1863/64; Bruckner re-worked it five years later once more, but declared towards the end of his life that it was “invalid”. There are two versions of the Symphony No. 1 in C minor. He composed the first version between May 1865 and July 1866 in Linz; in 1866 he re-wrote the Adagio once more. Bruckner performed this work himself for the first time on May 9th 1868 in the Redoutensaal in Linz. The audience was bewildered. Bruckner, who called the work “Beserl”, which means something like “street urchin”, re-wrote it a second time in 1890/ 91. This was the origin of the so-called Vienna version. The changes did not affect the overall structure as much as details of the instrumentation. The composer dedicated the work to the University of Vienna in 1891 as a sign of his gratitude for the award of the title of honorary Doctor. The first movement is composed in sonata form; the second is in ternary song form with A flat major as the basic key; the third movement is a Scherzo in G minor with a G major Trio, while the Finale is again composed in sonata form and finds its way back to the opening key of C minor. The present recording is based on the first version, the so-called Linz original version. Translation: Diana Loos