Bruckner: Symphony No. 4

Bruckner himself gave this symphony its nickname, “Romantic,” and apparently regarded it in programmatic terms, telling a story about medieval knights who ride out from a castle through the mists of dawn, into a forest where their hunting horns resound among the trees. The very stuff of late 19th-century German Romanticism. Like so many Bruckner symphonies, it plays out on a massive scale, with slowly building tensions that erupt into majestic climaxes. And to deliver it effectively requires the long-term sense of pace and line that Bernard Haitink, the conductor here, excelled in—he was arguably the finest Bruckner interpreter of modern times. Alongside the Vienna Philharmonic, which has Bruckner in its blood, his reading of this piece comes with a carefully planned grandeur: sweeping, spacious, thrilling.