Anton Bruckner's early symphonies are not as widely performed or recorded as his mature works, so Mario Venzago's double-disc on CPO of the Symphony in D minor, called "No. 0" or "Die Nullte," and the Symphony No. 1 in C minor is a stand-out from the nearly unstoppable run of recordings of the Fourth, Seventh, and Ninth. Venzago and the Tapiola Sinfonietta give exceptional performances that have technical polish and expressive warmth, and the charm the musicians draw out of these pieces makes one wonder why they aren't more ...
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Anton Bruckner's early symphonies are not as widely performed or recorded as his mature works, so Mario Venzago's double-disc on CPO of the Symphony in D minor, called "No. 0" or "Die Nullte," and the Symphony No. 1 in C minor is a stand-out from the nearly unstoppable run of recordings of the Fourth, Seventh, and Ninth. Venzago and the Tapiola Sinfonietta give exceptional performances that have technical polish and expressive warmth, and the charm the musicians draw out of these pieces makes one wonder why they aren't more popular. Certainly, both symphonies approach the later ones in expansiveness and seriousness, and there's more than a little Brucknerian sonic grandeur in these fledgling efforts. Yet even though these are works of the late 1860s, the music is still strongly governed by Classical models, and because the influence of Richard Wagner is absent in the symphonies prior to the Third, listeners who ordinarily find Bruckner too complicated, heavy, and ponderous may find these lighter works...
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