Bruckner - Symphony No 3

The Guardian 80

Gewandhaus Orchestra/Nelsons
(Deutsche Grammophon)

Andris Nelsons does not conduct his first concerts as music director of the Gewandhaus Orchester in Leipzig until March next year, but he has already begun his first recording project in his new role. This performance of the Third Symphony, taken from concerts in the Gewandhaus in June last year, inaugurates a complete Bruckner cycle from Nelsons and the orchestra, and he has opted to begin with what is perhaps the most contentious of the 10 symphonies from a textual point of view.

It has become fashionable for conductors to opt for one of the earlier editions of the Third Symphony, either the original of 1873, or one of the revisions, from the following year and 1877-78. But Nelsons sticks with the final, 1889 version of the work, more streamlined than its predecessors and with the quotations from Wagner (to whom Bruckner dedicated the Third) minimised. That seems to match perfectly his fleet, floating performance, which lasts just about an hour. There’s consistently superb playing from all sections of the orchestra, but it’s the transparency of the strings that gives the textures such buoyancy; nothing is too emphatic or insistent. There’s room on the disc for Wagner’s Tannhäuser Overture too, another chance for the ensemble to show how superb it is.