During the final concert of the 59th Wratislavia Cantans, we will look even more closely to the future than usual. After eighty years, Wrocław again becomes the home of the famous conductor Christoph Eschenbach, who was born here. During the first concert that the NFM Wrocław Philharmonic will play under the baton of its new artistic director, we will hear two masterpieces by Anton Bruckner. Maestro, welcome!

Christoph Eschenbach knows the work of the Austrian Romanticist very well. It was while conducting his Third Symphony that he made his debut as a conductor in Hamburg in 1972. Previously, despite his conducting studies, the general public knew him only as an accomplished pianist. Since then, he has conducted Bruckner’s works many times, each time proving that he is a brilliant interpreter of symphonic masterpieces and a charismatic leader able to inspire the orchestras he leads with the boldness of his artistic vision.

Both works to be performed during the festival finale, accompanied groundbreaking events in Bruckner’s life. He composed his first mature works in the first half of the 1860s. But in the spring of 1867 he experienced a nervous breakdown. Contrary to the recommendations of the doctors treating him, the Austrian started working on his third mass in September. In the original version, he completed it within a year. The result was a work full of optimism, despite its contemplative character and monumentality, which was a harbinger of the style of Bruckner’s brilliant nine symphonies that were yet to be written.

Events were gathering pace. When composing the Mass, the artist was looking for a way to move out of the provincial Linz. He was offered a teaching position at the Vienna Conservatory. He took over in October 1868. Shortly after moving, he began writing a new symphony, planned as the second. The work, created in nine months, was considered directly influenced by Beethoven's Ninth (Bruckner heard it only in 1866). Some musical ideas were also compared to Rossini’s operas or works by Russian composers. In fact, Bruckner’s genius shines brightly here with its own light. This is evidenced by the fact that the composer returned to several ideas from The Second in The Third Symphony. We will also hear the famous “primordial fog” (Urnebel), characteristic of Bruckner’s later symphonies, from which the first theme emerges in the opening movement. It was because of the “fog” that Otto Dessoff, conductor of the Vienna Philharmonic, could not find the first theme in the symphony at all. This fact touched Bruckner greatly. Increasingly doubtful of the composition’s value, he eventually removed it from his catalogue. Today, known as the “Nullte” [Zero] Symphony, it is considered one of his greatest artistic achievements.