Bruckner: Symphony No. 7 in E Major, WAB 107

Recorded in concert in the summer of 1988, this performance bears witness to the close bond between the Berlin Philharmonic and Seiji Ozawa. The Japanese conductor, who had studied with Herbert von Karajan in Berlin, was then at the height of his powers, still charged with the energy that had been his youthful trademark but fully alive to the subtle ebb and flow of time in Bruckner’s music. The Seventh Symphony runs deep in the Berlin orchestra’s collective conscious, legacy of more than a century of familiarity with its monumental score. Ozawa’s heartfelt interpretation trains the spotlight on the work’s singing lines, spinning arching melodies from passages in the outer movements that can all too easily sound disjointed, and striking an ideal balance between grandeur and tenderness in the “Adagio”.