Bruckner: Symphony No. 8

Boston Symphony Orchestra, Steinberg, William

ICA D5071

This series of DVDs will make the publicly broadcast BSO concerts from this era available for the first time since they were broadcast. This rare material represents some of the earliest televised concerts with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and William Steinberg, and has been restored using the greatest care and state-of-the-art techniques. It is of exceptional musical interest and historic value. The BSO’s Music Director for just three seasons, Steinberg spent a great deal of time in the USA, having left Europe following Music Director positions in Cologne, Prague and Frankfurt. He also co-founded the Palestine Orchestra, later the Israel Philharmonic. His time with the BSO came at the end of his career following his position as the Music Director of Pittsburgh Symphony, which he held for over 20 years. Steinberg recorded a great deal of material with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra to great acclaim, but only a small selection of recordings with the BSO for DG. A live recording of Bruckner 8 with Steinberg and the BSO, from 1972, was issued as part of the orchestra’s Centennial Celebration set, and has been described as a ‘good, well paced and powerful reading, well played by the Bostonians’. Steinberg leads this Bruckner 8 performance from memory and with great subtlety and distinction in a sympathetic interpretation that provoked a rapturous response from the Boston audience.

DVD x 1

ICA Classics

30/04/2012

5060244550711