Home listening - Bruckner, Mahler and Schubert

The Guardian 0

New releases from Robin Ticciati and his Berlin band, Iván Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra, plus Roderick Williams’s travels with Schubert

• Bruckner’s Symphony No 6 in A major has always been an outsider: surprising and boldly melodic, less freighted with the editorial complexities (and popularity) of the Fourth, the contrapuntal knottiness of the Fifth, or the massive ambitions of the Eight and Ninth. Robin Ticciati has tackled this core German Romantic work with his new (since 2017) ensemble, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, each player lovingly listed in the Linn CD booklet.

On this evidence, they have already forged a bond. The performance is transparent, expressive and, considering the composer, light-footed, with exhilarating, clean-edged brass and tightly rhythmic strings in the first movement. The sumptuously melodic slow movement unfolds with grandeur and introspection, before the short, intense scherzo. The majestic finale progresses with powerful momentum but no undue pressure or urgency.