Hans Knappertsbusch - The Decca & Westminster Bruckner Recordings (4CD)

Newly remastered and gathered under one roof for the first time, the Decca recordings of Hans Knappertsbusch conducting Bruckner: a legendary combination.

MORE INFORMATION 

For record collectors in the 1950s and 60s, the names of Bruckner and Knappertsbusch (‘Kna’) were practically synonymous. At a time when the composer’s symphonies were routinely compared to Gothic cathedrals, the rough grandeur, steady pulse and towering climaxes of these readings marked out the conductor as an architect of symphonic majesty.

Knappertsbusch began recording Bruckner for Decca in 1954, with the Third. The Fourth and Fifth quickly followed, also from Vienna, and then the Eighth arrived as an appendix from Munich, first issued on the Westminster label in 1963. By then the conductor’s readings of Romantic repertoire had become less impulsive, even more monumental in concept, but still lightened by a natural feeling for the dance rhythms in Bruckner’s scherzos and Ländler themes.

TRACK LIST

ANTON BRUCKNER (1824–1896)

CD 1
1–4 Symphony No. 3 in D minor

CD 2
1–4 Symphony No. 4 in E flat major ‘Romantic’

CD 3
1–4 Symphony No. 5 in B flat major
5 Symphony No. 8 in C minor (movement I)

CD 4
1–3 Symphony No. 8 in C minor (movements II–IV)

Wiener Philharmoniker (Nos. 3, 4 & 5)
Münchener Philharmoniker (No. 8)
Hans Knappertsbusch