Presto Recording of the Week
5th February 2021

Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Andris Nelsons

Wagner: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg: Overture
Bruckner: Symphony No. 2 in C minor
Bruckner: Symphony No. 8 in C minor

Andris Nelsons and the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig continue their award-winning Bruckner cycle. This time the Symphonies are coupled with Wagner’s Meistersinger Prelude. The Orchestra and the Latvian Maestro recently announced the extension of their acclaimed partnership until 2027. In 2019 The Times (UK) raved about Andris Nelsons and the Gewandhausorchester’s visit to the BBC Proms, “He [Bruckner] really does have to be played very, very well if the spaces that suddenly open up around the notes are not to seem a slackening of tension. It was one of the outstanding features of Nelsons’s reading – among the best Bruckner interpretations I’ve heard – that they never did. Every standstill was pregnant with consequence; and, while one could relish the beauty of sound [...] one felt the pacing hidden in the background. Detail was luxurious, but architecture paramount, and Nelsons’s unshowy approach profoundly impressive. One could almost believe one had come across that impossible thing: the ego-less conductor. No exhibitionism here. He revealed Bruckner, with a relentless vision that takes us into the strangest places, as greater than ever.”

"His mission is seemingly to eschew a more strident approach where everything becomes just a boisterous, blaring festival of brass, concentrating instead on ensuring that interesting details and counter-melodies don't get lost in the mix...Focussing on the lyrical aspect of Bruckner's music works extremely successfully in the slow movement of the Eighth: the tranquil radiance of the Leipzig strings in the opening bars is quite mesmerising." - James Longstaffe, Presto Classical, 5th February 2021.