My first encounter with Bruckner was as a child listening to Herbert von Karajan concerts in Berlin. I well remember him conducting the Fifth Symphony. I was blown away by the end and immediately felt it to be a beautiful piece. Some years ago, the musicians of the Vienna Philharmonic recounted how Karajan would tell them not to play the Fifth like a school exercise – ‘I know what this theme is, and the next, and where it reappears, and so on.’ On the contrary, everything should be amalgamated, of a piece.

I’ve never found the symphony complicated; the very reverse, in fact – I find it accessible. The first three movements are certainly less complicated than those of the Fourth Symphony, which can easily be taken too slowly: for instance, the slow movement, which Bruckner marks Andante quasi Allegretto. Things like that don’t happen in the Fifth. Bruckner called this his Phantastische Symphony: a work rich in what we call Stimmung (‘atmosphere’), where every line must sing. The first movement is something you can sing, it is a melody you immediately have in your ear. Its Allegro theme is so happy. In fact, the whole symphony seems quite happy, even the slow movement, which isn’t sad, nor is it affected by feelings of negation or frustration.

And then there’s the third movement. For the Vienna Philharmonic’s 2024 New Year’s Day concert, we’re playing Wolfgang Dörner’s new orchestration of Bruckner’s Quadrille, originally written for solo piano. It is exactly what a young 20-year-old would have played in a local tavern. You can imagine people having a drink and listening as he played. You probably wouldn’t guess that the composer is Bruckner! When you hear this piece, you understand the Ländler in this third movement.

As for the fourth movement, too much analysis isn’t good for it. Take the double fugue. There comes a point when you can’t highlight every new incoming theme; it’s all too obvious. It should be clear, but I think that Bruckner wanted the fugue to be absorbed into the flow of the music. It’s such wonderful music harmonically, and it’s not too long. There used to be a cut in the development section, which was thought overlong, but if you play the movement without the cut you have a far clearer sense of where it’s all going. As for the orchestration, Bruckner’s writing comes from the organ. With the colours and the sonority of the organ in mind, you can understand what he is doing.

Conducting Wagner operas teaches you how to build climaxes. It is the same with Bruckner symphonies. If it’s too loud too soon, or you’re exhausted by the end of the first movement, something’s wrong. If you listen to the great conductors, you hear where the tension is building within an idea and where it releases.

When I conduct the Ring, I think of the end of Götterdämmerung as I’m beginning Das Rheingold. It’s vital to have this internal understanding of where everything is leading – something that gets better after years of doing it. Like the Eighth Symphony, the whole of the Fifth is a journey towards its end. No other symphony has a triple-forte Chorale at its end, yet because the tension is sustained throughout, it all seems perfectly logical.

Bruckner comes from an Austrian music-making environment. It is not German, but it is very near: perhaps southern German. With the Fifth Symphony, however, the more you look into it, the more endless it seems – like the changing clouds, or those lines of 250-year-old trees you see in what was formerly known as East Prussia which go on for 20 km or more. It suggests a kind of eternity.

You don’t need to be Catholic to understand Bruckner. What is important is that you know how firmly he stood by what he believed in. It’s similar to hearing Bach’s St Matthew Passion or B minor Mass: even if you have no belief, you come away from the last note asking, ‘Is it a mistake not to believe in anything?’

What I also like about Bruckner is that there is always a positive end. There’s no sense of desperation here, nothing that would make you want to throw yourself off a bridge. It’s interesting how similar this is to Wagner. Even after Tristan und Isolde or Götterdämmerung you have the feeling that life goes on. Bruckner always gives me a positive energy.

Interview by Henry Kennedy

This article originally appeared in the January 2024 issue of Gramophone. Never miss an issue of the world's leading classical music magazine – subscribe today