Symphony No. 9 in D Minor

From Leopold Nowak's Foreword: 'The first performance of the Ninth Symphony took place in Vienna on 11 February 1903, seven years after Bruckner's death; it was Ferdinand Löwe who took this step, conducting the orchestra of the Wiener Konzertverein. He had, however, "been zealous in carrying out retouchings and changes in instrumentation throughout all of the many rehearsals," (Auer) and in the event the work was clad in a quite different overall sound from the one the composer had in mind. Löwe did all this with the best of intentions and his services to Bruckner's work as a whole are still recognized as being among the greatest that anyone has ever performed for the master of Sankt Florian. But when, on 2 April 1932, Siegmund von Hausegger and the Munich Philharmonic played the familiar version followed by the original, the invited audience were in no doubt as to how Bruckner himself had wanted his Ninth to sound.'

Orchestration: 3,3,3,3,-8(5-8+WagnerTb),3,3,1-Timp-Str