The bicentenary of the birth of Anton Bruckner may still be 12 months away, but the record companies are already mustering their anniversary celebrations. On Sony Classical, Christian Thielemann’s cycle of the symphonies with the Vienna Philharmonic is well advanced for completion next year, while in two weeks’ time Deutsche Grammophon will release the complete set of Bruckner recordings that Andris Nelsons has been compiling over the last six years with the Leipzig Gewandhaus. Other archive-sourced sets will doubtless follow, but in the meantime the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra has got in first with a set of the nine numbered symphonies (that is not including the rarely performed early F minor and D minor works) all taken from concerts in the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam between 1972 and 2012. The recordings can already be streamed on Apple Music, and will be released on CD (both individually and in a box) on 8 September.
