Congratulations, dear Christoph Eschenbach: we are honouring our former chief conductor, who led the Konzerthausorchester Berlin from autumn 2019 to summer 2023, on his 85th birthday with a concert in which he will be conducting in the Große Saal, of course.

For this special occasion, he has chosen a work of a composer who had late start: Anton Bruckner (1824 - 1896) did not begin writing symphonies until he was over 40 years old. The fact that he, like Beethoven, came up with a total of nine ‘cathedrals of never-before-heard sounds’ (Lorin Maazel) despite this is a real miracle - and doubly so in view of his self-doubting character: he actually completed the final version of the Sixth within two years. He called it his ‘cheekiest’ symphony, and as such it does not rise slowly from a musical primordial fog, but begins directly and with an accentuated rhythm. It was premièred in parts in 1883, heavily abridged in 1899 and not performed in its entirety until 1935. Bruckner was only able to hear it once in its entirety during an orchestral rehearsal.