Season opening 2024: Kirill Petrenko conducts Bruckner’s Fifth

As chief conductor, Kirill Petrenko has already performed many works of German-Austrian symphonic music with the Berliner Philharmoniker. Following symphonies by Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Brahms and Mahler, he now performs music by Anton Bruckner with the orchestra for the first time.

When Bruckner composed his Fifth Symphony, he was suffering from financial worries, a lack of recognition and general despondency. He wrote to a friend at this time: “My life has lost all joy and pleasure.” The fact that he conceived what was probably his most ambitious work to date precisely in this situation speaks volumes for the composer’s perseverance and determination to create. The work, throughout which Bruckner has woven a tightly woven web of motivic and thematic relationships, culminates in a finale of almost incomparably powerful grandeur. As in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, themes from the previous movements return at the beginning of the finale in Bruckner’s Fifth. And as in the last movement of Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony, Bruckner’s work ends with a layering of various motifs and themes in a masterly fugal technique. For the last section, Bruckner reserved the return of a powerful brass chorale.

In keeping with the difficult time of its composition, Bruckner was unable to travel to the premiere due to illness. It took place in 1894 – almost 20 years after the work was completed – and presented the symphony in a version questionably arranged by the conductor Franz Schalk. But in a letter to Bruckner, Schalk proved to be right in his assessment: “No one who has not heard it can imagine the devastating power of the finale.” 

Berliner Philharmoniker

Kirill Petrenko