Bruckner: From the Archives, Vol. 3 (Remastered 2024)

SOMM Recordings is pleased to release Volume 3 in its “major commemorative series” (ConcertoNet.com) Bruckner from the Archives. Many of the expertly restored and remastered recordings, like these performances of the Third and Fourth Symphonies, are appearing for the first time in any form.

Conceived and designed by SOMM Executive Producer and acclaimed Audio Restoration Engineer Lani Spahr with support from the Bruckner Society of America, Bruckner from the Archives celebrates the 200th anniversary of the composer’s birth in 1824 with rare archival recordings of the 11 symphonies and selected other important works. These have been sourced by Lani Spahr from the more than 11,000 Bruckner performances in the Archive of John F. Berky, Executive Secretary of the Bruckner Society of America, who also acts as Consultant for this important series.

This third instalment offers live radio broadcasts of Bruckner’s Symphony No.3 by the NDR Symphony Orchestra under Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt (1966) and Symphony No.4 by the Munich Philharmonic under Volkmar Andreae (1958). These never-before-heard interpretations from the Bruckner symphonic canon offer a new perspective on these much-loved works, particularly as they are accompanied by the very latest in scholarship about the works’ genesis in the context of Bruckner’s life and compositional development, written by Professor Benjamin Korstvedt, President of the Bruckner Society of America and member of the Editorial Board of the New Anton Bruckner Complete Edition. Prof. Korstvedt commends the Brucknerian pedigree of Schmidt-Isserstedt and the NDR SO, an orchestra built by the conductor and led by him for two decades after the Second World War. They in fact had given the very first performances of the Oeser Edition of the Third shortly after its publication in 1950.

So, too, Swiss composer–conductor Volkmar Andreae, who was a leading Bruckner advocate: by the end of his career he had led more than 250 Bruckner performances. This recording of the Fourth, from 1958 with the Munich Philharmonic, is typical Andreae: characterful, at times fiery and passionate, at others deeply expressive, but always keenly alive to the richly varied content and moods of the music.