Simon Sechter News Today

Gerd Schaller on the immediacy and philosophical nature of the composer’s first numbered symphony

It is one thing to love a pipe organ, but to be buried under one is another thing. Yet that is exactly what Josef Anton Bruckner did. He designed his own sarcophagus and had himself placed under his favorite organ in Saint Florian Monastery in Austria.

After the extraordinary musical developments of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven the composition of a symphony became a daunting challenge, for many years the ultimate challenge for any composer. Many rose magnificently to that challenge, not least Brahms, Mahler, Sibelius and Shostakovich

Devout yet unconventional, Bruckner’s Fifth has long been misjudged, says Terry Williams, who finds which recordings reveal its greatness