Iván Fischer and Bruckner’s third and Bach

The orchestra eagerly anticipates playing Bruckner’s Third Symphony under the direction of honorary guest conductor Iván Fischer. Bruckner dedicated this profound masterpiece to his idol, Richard Wagner. Iván Fischer points out, however, that Bruckner’s art has much older foundations. Therefore, this programme also includes a work by the great baroque composer Johann Sebastian Bach: the inal, and least familiar, of his four orchestral suites (BWV 1066-1069). 

Bruckner’s Symphony No. 3 is filled with melodic and harmonic inventions, but it left Viennese audiences cold: at the premiere in 1877, listeners stormed out of the concert hall. Only Gustav Mahler remained, along with a handful of young admirers. That was a massive blow to Bruckner’s fragile self-confidence, and he spent many years tinkering on the work. Eventually, the Third began to catch on, even in Amsterdam: in 1892, it became the first Bruckner Symphony the Concertgebouw Orchestra ever played. 

Bach, like Bruckner, was a gifted organist and a profoundly religious man. He is recognised as the grand master of counterpoint, or the art of making several voices sound together in one harmonious whole. Bruckner gave that early technique an utterly new twist within the symphonic form popularised by Beethoven and Brahms.