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Donald Macleod follows Bruckner to Vienna, where he finds friends who encourage him but also vicious detractors.

From our modern perspective, it can be difficult to appreciate why it took so long for Anton Bruckner to be recognised as one of the leading musical voices of the 19th century. His spectacular symphonies regularly pack out concert halls today, but his own era took many decades to warm to his music. Only in his sixties did Bruckner begin to achieve the popularity he deserved and, even then, he retained a reputation as a bit of an oddball. Colleagues were disturbed by his unsophisticated manners, unquestioning religious devotion and peculiar personal habits. His tendency to see enemies all around regularly tested his relationships. His romantic choices were routinely disastrous.

This week, Donald Macleod marks the 200th anniversary of Bruckner’s birth by examining Bruckner’s lifelong struggle to become the great composer we know today.

Today, Bruckner moves to Vienna, one of the great musical centres of Europe, but he finds a distinctly mixed reception there, for his music. When the city’s leading critics discover Bruckner’s devotion to the arch-modernist, Richard Wagner, they become actively hostile.

Symphony No 6 in A major (ed. Novak) (3rd mvt, Scherzo, Nicht schnell - Trio, Langsam)
Staatskapelle Dresden, conducted by Eugen Jochum

Symphony No 2 in C minor (1877 version) (2nd mvt, Andante)
Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, conducted by Marek Janowski

Symphony No 3 in D minor ‘Wagner Symphony' (1873 version) (4th mvt, Finale, Allegro – Etwas langsamer – Erstes Zeitmaß)
Berliner Philharmoniker, conducted by Herbert Blomstedt

String Quintet in F major, (4th mvt, Finale, Lebhaft bewegt)
Vladimir Mendelssohn (viola), Sonare Quartet