CANCELLED: NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester / Marek Janowski

Beit Wagner, Strauss, Brahms – or Anton Bruckner: maestro Marek Janowski has an international reputation as an expert on the German Romantic orchestral repertoire. For several years now the current chief conductor of the Dresden Philharmonic has regularly guest-conducted the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra. In the jubilee season marking the orchestra’s 75th anniversary, he also joins in its longstanding Bruckner tradition.

The composer himself called his Fifth Symphony, completed in 1875, his »masterpiece«: in this work, he took a variety of composition techniques to extremes. The finale, for example, is an overwhelming double fugue that climaxes in a solemn chorale, to be played »fortefortissimo right to the end«, as Bruckner wrote in the score. He also gave the symphony two unofficial nicknames, the »Catholic« symphony or the »Symphony of Faith«. The great conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler, incidentally, regarded the fourth movement as nothing less than »the most monumental finale in all of history«.