Franz Welser-Möst & The Cleveland Orchestra

"Happy Birthday, Anton!" - Concert for Bruckner's 200th birthday in Ansfelden

Since 2018, the International Bruckner Festival Linz has begun every year on 4 September, the birthday of its namesake. The birthday concert to kick off the festival always takes place in Ansfelden, the place where it all began for Anton Bruckner, where he was born in the servants' quarters of the school building and baptised on the same day in the neighbouring parish church.

In 2024, the well-wishers could hardly be more prominent: The Cleveland Orchestra, known as the "most European" of the American orchestras, and its chief conductor Franz Welser-Möst from Linz did the honours and paid tribute to the birthday boy with an open-air performance in the open space between the parish church and the courtyard.

In keeping with the setting under the open (evening) sky, after the prelude and "Isolde's Liebestod" from Richard Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde, the night piece par excellence, Bruckner's Symphony No. 4 in E flat major, his first in a major key, is one of the composer's most memorable and therefore most popular works, to which the title Romantic and the associations associated with it, which go back to the composer himself, have contributed significantly. This applies in particular to the "1878/80 version", whose depictions of nature clothed in sound find one of many highlights in the newly composed third movement, which became famous under the nickname "Jagd-Scherzo". Its premiere on 20 February 1881 by the Vienna Philharmonic under Hans Richter was a great success and represented an important 'stage victory' for Bruckner on his way to becoming a recognised symphonist.