Bruckner 5 for organ - World Premiere Recording Gerd Schaller

• Anton Bruckner (1824 - 1896): Symphony No. 5 in B Flat Major:
• 1 Bruckner: Symphony No. 5 in B Flat Major - I. Introduction. Adagio - Allegro 18:29
• 2 Bruckner: Symphony No. 5 in B Flat Major - II. Adagio. Sehr langsam 16:14
• 3 Bruckner: Symphony No. 5 in B Flat Major - III. Scherzo. Molto vivace (schnell) - Trio 14:33
• 4 Bruckner: Symphony No. 5 in B Flat Major - IV. Finale. Adagio - Allegro moderato 23:06
• Total Runtime 01:12:22

Info for Bruckner 5 for organ - World Premiere Recording

Bruckner's Fifth is eminently suited to an arrangement for performance on the organ above all because of it's musical texture. In no other Bruckner symphony, for example, does counterpoint play such an important part. I am thinking in particular of the great fugue in the final movement. It really does seem as if many passages of this magnificent work were composed as if with the organ in mind, even though the Fifth is not a piece for organ at all, being in the first place a symphonic work. And yet it lends itself admirably to the extraction of a compositional substrate with no loss of essential content. That cannot be said of all Bruckner's symphonies. Of all his symphonies, in my opinion, the Fifth, Eighth and Ninth are most amenable to an arrangement for organ. Building on the compositional core, it is the orchestral treatment above all that plays a key role. If this is lacking, an arrangement of the work can deprive the work of it's grandeur. That is again at risk if one attempts to copy the orchestra or to transpose certain orchestral effects one-to-one onto the organ. Such an approach is generally unsatisfactory, because organ writing is governed by different rules than those applying to orchestral scoring. It would be fatal to make the organ rival the orchestra. My aim from the start was to avoid imitating the orchestra and to create a work specifically for organ in the manner of an organ symphony.

Gerd Schaller, organ (Eisenbarth organ of the former Cistercian abbey church Ebrach)

Gerd Schaller
He is acknowledged as one of the most significant contemporary interpreters of the works of Bruckner. He studied conducting and worked at various German opera houses (State Opera Hanover, principal conductor with the State Theatre in Braunschweig, GMD at the theatre in Magdeburg); since 2006, he has been operating freelance, and is frequently invited to serve as guest conductor by famous orchestras both at home and abroad.

In 2008 he founded the Philharmonie Festiva, a symphony orchestra comprising selected musicians from top German orchestras, with whom he has been pursuing his own urbane musical projects ever since.

For many years, the music of Anton Bruckner has been at the very heart of Gerd Schaller's work; the composer’s combination of profound emotionalism and potent complexity has fascinated the conductor since his early youth. That fascination has resulted in Schaller’s large-scale CD album project BRUCKNER2024, which aims to have recorded, by the time of Bruckner’s 200th birthday in 2024, all of the composer’s symphonies in all their versions with his orchestra, the Philharmonie Festiva. The project began with the symphonies – some of them in hitherto unknown versions – that Schaller has already committed to CD with the Philharmonie Festiva for the Profil Günter Hänssler label; a series that has won numerous prizes and awards at home and abroad. One highlight of that first tranche of recordings was undoubtedly Schaller's completion, based on the composer's own sketches, of the final movement of the 9th Symphony, released on CD and published in full score version in 2018

Alongside this Bruckner symphonic cycle Schaller has also recorded a number of Bruckner’s sacred works, such as his Mass in F minor and the 146th Psalm, as well as all of his organ works, played by Schaller himself on a reconstructed and expanded instrument.

In addition to his passion for Bruckner's works, the conductor shows a pronounced delight in discovering new and unknown repertoire, and has been championing the rehabilitation of forgotten works and rare gems such as Carl Goldmark’s opera Merlin, whose modern-day premiere he conducted and whose score he edited for the Ries & Erler music publishing house. Over and above that, Gerd Schaller has truly made his mark in the world of opera specifically with the works of Richard Wagner, Richard Strauss and Giuseppe Verdi. The wide-ranging spectrum of his achievement encompasses works by rarely played composers, and in the course of his career Gerd Schaller has amassed a vast repertoire for the concert stage ranging from the Baroque to the present day.

The conductor is also Artistic Director of the Ebrach Summer Music Festival, founded by him in 1990, which in recent years has received ever more international critical acclaim precisely on account of Schaller’s enlightened Bruckner readings performed in the ideal acoustic atmosphere of Ebrach Abbey.

This album contains no booklet.