Ever since the tenure of its chief conductor Eduard van Beinum (1945–59), the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra has cherished one of the greatest Bruckner symphonic traditions in the world. With this release of Bruckner’s Third and Fourth Symphonies, Mariss Jansons and his Amsterdam-based orchestra add a new chapter to the RCO’s impressive performance and recording history of Bruckner’s works.
In Jansons’s view, the refinement of Bruckner’s music – however grandiose it may be – will always win out over grandiloquence. He continues the orchestra’s performance traditions, focusing particularly on the detail of the sound. Under Jansons’s baton, Bruckner has a warm, beating heart: his rhythms are not simply played, they are, above all, experienced.
