Christian Thielemann conducts Bruckner

In this remarkable concert live from the 2020 Salzburg Festival, the Wiener Philharmoniker plays Bruckner's Fourth Symphony under the expert direction of Christian Thielemann. Known as the "Romantic" Symphony, this remains one of Bruckner's most widely beloved works, alongside the Seventh and Eighth Symphonies. Bruckner chose the nickname himself and noted several programmatic elements—keep an ear out for musical representations of a "medieval city," bird song and "forest murmurs," knights atop "proud horses" enveloped by "the magic of nature"...

Early in his career, Maestro Thielemann was an assistant to Herbert von Karajan and to Daniel Barenboim at the Bayreuth Festival. After a successful Lohengrin in Berlin and a smash Elektra at New York's Metropolitan Opera in the early 1990s, he was named musical director of the Deutsche Oper Berlin and, later, of the Munich Philharmonic, the Staatskapelle Dresden (a post he will hold until at least 2024), and the Bayreuth Festival. In 2019 he directed the Wiener Philharmoniker in their highly anticipated Vienna New Year's Concert.

Photo: Christian Thielemann © OFS/Matthias Creutziger