Luogo e data di registrazione		Frankfurt (Germania) - settembre 1986 & ottobre 1987
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Producer / Engineer		-
	Prima Edizione LP		Teldec - 6.43302 AZ - (1 LP) - durata 57' 10" - (p) 1987 - Digitale
	Prima Edizione CD		Teldec - 8.43302 ZK - (1 CD) - durata 57' 10" - (p) 1987 - DDD
	Note		Co-Produktion mit dem HR, Franfurt.

Bruckner started work on the draft of his Ninth Symphony on 21st September 1887, immediately after completing the first version of the Symphony no. 8. But it was not until 1891, when he retired from his professor’s post at the Vienna Conservatoire, that he was able to devote his full attention to the new symphony. Work on the Ninth became a race with death, and despite Bruckner’s exertions the symphony remained a torso. The finale never advanced beyond the rough draft stage. Shortly before his death, Bruckner had expressed the wish that his “Te Deum” be played at performances of the Ninth in place of the last movement. Conductors have only followed the composer’s suggestion to a limited extent, however, on account of the difference in style. The opening of Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony grows gradually out of a scarcely audible whisper. Eight horns hesitatingly explore the harmonic field before sounding a solemn fanfare. After expansive modulations in triple forte the main theme makes its appearance: an elemental outbreak of pent-up energy which then crashes to the ground in abrupt octaves. The broad, flowing strings melody of the second subject, the melodic and harmonic wonders there of and the third thematic group that returns to D minor all provide contrast in a movement ending as it were in an open question in the coda (empty fifths). As in its predecessor, in the Ninth Symphony Bruckner moves the scherzo to second place. Chasms open up in this ghostly movement, in which the tonal perspective is permanently at a slant. Obstinate accompanying chords on the strings give the development a menacing tension, while string pizzicati that scurry past give the movement an unreal, spooky atmosphere. After the scherzo, the adagio has the effect of a farewell to the earthly world. With this movement in particular Bruckner stands on the threshold of the 20th century. Not until the seventh bar of the main subject does the key of E major break through in radiant glory. As if the music was trying to throw off all earthly ties, after the jump of a ninth the subject is heard here, soaring up more and more ardently. Bruckner himself wanted the descending sixth chords of the tubas and horns in the second subject to be interpreted as a “farewell to life”. At the end of the movement the opening motif from the adagio of the Eighth Symphony and the main subject of the Seventh Symphony are heard once more. Thus the adagio of the Ninth already has a certain finale character about it. More than six years after Bruckner’s death, the Ninth Symphony was given its first performance on 11th February 1903 in Vienna’s Musikvereinssaal. The performance under the baton of Ferdinand Löwe was a resounding success. On this occasion, however, the symphony was played in Ferdinand Löwe’s own radical revised version, which took its cue from the orchestral sound of Wagner. It was this version that was printed in the same year, and soon conducted by Richard Strauss, among others. The musical world had to wait almost thirty years before Alfred Orel’s new edition gave it the chance to experience the Ninth Symphony in its authentic form. At a concert in Munich, Sigmund von Hausegger presented the two versions of the work side-byside before an invited audience. 36 years after the composer’s death, the starting signal for the victory of Bruckner’s original version was finally given. Hans Christoph Worbs Translation: C. R. Williams