BRUCKNER – SYMPHONY No 1

It must have been in around 1860 that the 36-year old Anton Bruckner, organist at the Cathedral in Linz, decides that he wants to compose large-scale symphonies.
For the last few years he has been studying on and off with Professor Sechter, formerly a teacher of composers such as Schubert and Lanner, and himself an institution at the Vienna Academy. But in 1861 Bruckner wraps up his work with Sechter and starts to take lessons with Otto Kitlzler, Kapellmeister at the opera house in Linz and almost ten years his junior. He hopes to gain insights into the latest musical techniques and trends.
Kitzler soon introduces him to the music of Richard Wagner and Bruckner is deeply moved by a performance of Tannhäuser that his new teacher puts on in Linz.
He composes a few exercises for orchestra and for string quartet as well as a «Studiensymphonie», a study-symphony (by the way, this is not the better-known Symphony No. 0, which was written after the first symphony and then withdrawn). His studies are now complete and in the years between 1864 and 1868 he write three masses and, following the model of Schubert’s monumental Ninth, his own first symphony.