Gstaad Festival Orchestra

With his Seventh, the long-suffering Anton Bruckner finally achieved the breakthrough he had longed for. Although this unique, fundamentally lyrical symphony ends in a wonderful, radiant E major, at its centre is the great C-sharp minor Adagio, in which moving funeral music leads to a grandiose climax and immediately transforms into an achingly sublime epitaph for Richard Wagner, who had recently died. Felix Mendelssohn's immortal Violin Concerto also expresses great emotions, but more compactly. Passion, virtuosity, songfulness and, in the finale, cheerful, capricious fairy sprits make it a standard audience favourite, here performed by Janine Jansen and the Gstaad Festival Orchestra under Jaap van Zweden.