Living, Breathing Bruckner

Andris Nelsons’ revelatory readings of Bruckner’s symphonies are permeated by his understanding of the many contradictions within the composer’s character – not least the opposition between an essential awareness of his own talent and the insecurity that compelled him to rework his scores again and again. The latest title in the Latvian conductor’s ongoing cycle for Deutsche Grammophon, performed with his Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, prefaces Bruckner’s Sixth and Ninth Symphonies with Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll and Prelude to Parsifal respectively. Light and dark, triumph and tragedy, life and death coexist here in a state of uneasy tension, resolved but never reconciled. Listen here.