"Anton Bruckner's Fourth Symphony is one of the most beloved and frequently performed works in the orchestral repertoire. Despite this, a great deal about the work and its genesis has been either unknown, poorly understood, or starkly misrepresented. The work's extraordinary history is the source of much of this confusion. Bruckner worked on the Fourth over fifteen years before he finally published the score in 1889. During the process, he created...

Christian Thielemann is a compelling advocate for German music, and his Salzburg Festival 2020 program with the Wiener Philharmoniker is smack-dab at the heart of his favored repertoire. For his long-awaited return to the Summer Festival, he opens with Wagner's Wesendock Songs, considered musical sketches for the opera Tristan und Isolde, with terrific Latvian mezzo-soprano Elina Garanca as soloist. The centerpiece is Bruckner's Symphony No. Four,...

Period-drama depiction of the private, first performance of Beethoven's "Eroica" symphony at the Lobkowitz Palace in 1805, the momentous musical event that prompted composer Joseph Haydn to remark "Everything is different from today."

Joshua Bell lights up the stage with this dazzling performance of Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto, the centerpiece of the Nobel Prize Concert in Stockholm in honor of the 2010 Nobel Laureates. The tribute opens with music by Beethoven that urgently evokes the spirit of freedom from tyranny. Closing the evening is a glowing account by Sakari Oramo and the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic of Sibelius's monument to orchestral majesty, the titanic Fifth Symphony....