Bruckner: Symphony No. 2 in C minor

Performing with: Swedish Chamber Orchestra

AMAZON

This account is excellent – perfectly paced and balanced – and the smallish orchestra is all to the good in making Bruckner’s stark originality clear. But it would be unfair to regard the work itself, or this fresh account of it, as primarily to be listened to for instruction. The Second is a lovable and absorbing work, to be treasured for itself.

BBC Music Magazine

*****

A Bruckner symphony played by a chamber orchestra?…Bruckner’s lyrical moments achieve a wonderful intimacy, while his quirky structures and changing textures knit together in a manner hard to duplicate with big forces. Dausgaard’s players, horns especially, revel in the spotlight. Refreshing.

The Sunday Times

*****

Dausgaard takes the opening movement as an unarguable though never inflexible Moderato…The Andante is the highlight of this performance…Although shorn of all its repeats, the Scherzo never feels too brief thanks to observance of its ‘Mäßig schnell’ marking and an astute interplay of its incisive and more capricious elements.

International Record Review

*****

About

Thomas Dausgaard and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra take on Anton Bruckner’s Second Symphony – a work that is often regarded as the epitome of Romantic grandeur. This is the next instalment in the ‘Opening Doors’ series where Dausgaard and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra record Symphonic works.

On disc as well as in concert, Thomas Dausgaard and his Swedish Chamber Orchestra have attracted a growing international interest. The team regularly visit some of the world’s leading concert venues, and just recently their performance of Schumann’s Second Symphony at the BBC Proms made a great impact on audience and critics alike: “Dausgaard’s riveting way of embodying a rhythm rather than simply beating it was even more evident in the two Schumann pieces which book-ended the concert. The single movement from the unfinished G minor symphony was grippingly strange, and the great Second Symphony absolutely leapt off the page. It’s true Schumann does get very obsessed with a single rhythm in the opening movement, but here that just seemed like joie de vivre.”

TRACKLISTING

Anton Bruckner

Symphony No. 2 in C minor (1877 version)
1. I. Moderato 19:36
2. II. Andante. Feierlich, etwas bewegt 16:46
3. III. Scherzo. Mäßig schnell 6:50
4. IV. Finale. Mehr schnell 18:24

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