Date of composition: 1871-1872
Premiere: 26 October 1873 in the Großer Musikvereinssaal, Vienna by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of the composer as part of the closing ceremony of the World Exhibition
Duration: 65 minutes
Performances by the Berliner Philharmoniker:
first performed on 27 October 1902, conductor: Arthur Nikisch
“Nonsense!” Court opera conductor Otto Dessoff pronounced his judgement with utter self-assurance during one of the Vienna Philharmonic’s “new works” rehearals in the autumn of 1872, as he took in Anton Bruckner’s latest symphonic work – terse, unambiguous, and crushing. For the sensitive composer, it was a bitter setback – one of many. Just a few years earlier, he had moved to Vienna to begin a new chapter in his life and work. But he had known for a long time that Vienna’s music world was a snake pit. Bruckner’s provincial origins were glaringly apparent in his dress style and speech, and he was frequently dismissed as a country bumpkin, a naïve “musician of God” – “half genius, half fool.” From the newspapers, Bruckner learned that he had “an absolute inability to think according to the laws of musical logic.” He read: “Bruckner composes like a drunkard.” And then there were the venomous attacks of critic-in-chief Eduard Hanslick, who, after the (hugely successful) premiere of Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony, wrote: “It is not impossible that this dream-addled hangover belongs to the future – a future we do not envy.”
Yet despite his vulnerability, Bruckner retained the tenacity of a survivor throughout his life. Not even by the unpleasant reaction of the Viennese to his Second Symphony discouraged him. Strictly speaking, this “second” was actually his fourth symphony. Preceding it were a Study Symphony, his official First Symphony, and the “Annulled” (0th) Symphony, which he later declared “invalid”. Bruckner took Dessoff’s judgment to heart, but was not completely derailed. A year after the rejection, he simply hired the Vienna Philharmonic and conducted the premiere of the work himself.
The audience was ecstatic, while the critics were perplexed. In comparison to more typical symphonies of the time, Bruckner’s approach was confounding. In the first movement, three main themes unfold with seemingly aimless expansiveness; almost casually, Bruckner dispenses with the need for a single point of convergence. An unsettling trumpet fanfare in Bruckner’s distinctive rhythmic mix of duplets and triplets recurs throughout the entire symphony, raising questions rather than offering stability. And perhaps most unnervingly of all: again and again, immense climaxes break off abruptly, skidding to a halt at the edge of the precipice, plunging the audience into deafening silence. “Pause Symphony,” contemporaries mocked. Bruckner’s thorough revision of 1876/77 did away with many of these tension-filled voids. Heard in the original version, however, they still exert their full, disconcerting effect. Such disparities and depths were apparently profoundly confronting for Bruckner’s contemporaries. For Hanslick and his ilk, it was easier to hurl insults than it would have been to grapple with the unknown.