Since taking up his post as principal conductor of the Dresden Staatskapelle in 2012, Christian Thielemann has launched each new concert season with a Bruckner symphony. In autumn 2015 he choose for the opening concert at Dresden’s historic Semperoper the Sixth, and for the Sächsische Zeitung this performance marked “another Bruckner triumph for Dresden”. Thielemann once more “conjured up the most magical of sonorities” and “the orchestra played magnificently under him“. (Der Neue Merker) Bruckner’s Sixth Symphony is an interesting work among the composer’s other repertoire, as it doesn’t bear his typical compositional style, which surprised both audiences and critics when it premiered. Robert Simpson wrote of the work: “Its themes are exceptionally beautiful, its harmony has moments of both boldness and subtlety, its instrumentation is the most imaginative that he had yet achieved, and it possesses a mastery of classical form that might even have impressed Brahms.”
