Vienna Philharmonic 2

Anton Bruckner felt most at home with the Catholic Church. As organist at Linz Cathedral, his playing on the instrument was incomparable. He lived a chaste life and conscientiously fulfilled his prayer obligations. But in 1863, he encountered music by Richard Wagner for the first time at the Linz opera house: the erotically charged Tannhäuser. Bruckner was blown away by the rich woodwind writing, powerfully rising waves, and chromatic progressions of Wagner’s musical language. He wanted to do something similar, but in the field of orchestral music. His First Symphony from 1866 marks an early milestone in this development. Bruckner described the score as a “cheeky little thing,” which raises some questions. Was he thinking of an actual cleaning tool (he uses the word for “little broom”) or of what people in his day called a “smart sweeper,” that is, a dashing woman? Before Christian Thielemann and the Vienna Philharmonic solve this riddle, you will first encounter the new winner of the highly prestigious “Credit Suisse Young Artist Award,” the phenomenal cellist Julia Hagen, in Robert Schumann’s arch-Romantic Cello Concerto. She has appeared at the Salzburg Festival and the Festival d’Aix-en- Provence, performed in a trio with Igor Levit and Renaud Capuçon, and was recently honored with the Beethoven Ring. She also has a “genealogical” connection to Lucerne Festival as the daughter of Clemens Hagen and a pupil of Jens Peter Maintz, the two principal cellists of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra.