Newly remastered and gathered under one roof for the first time, the Decca recordings of Hans Knappertsbusch conducting Bruckner: a legendary combination.

For record collectors in the 1950s and 60s, the names of Bruckner and Knappertsbusch (Kna) were practically synonymous. At a time when the composers symphonies were routinely compared to Gothic cathedrals, the rough grandeur, steady pulse and towering climaxes of these readings marked out the conductor as an architect of symphonic majesty.

Record companies did not have to work hard to cultivate this image, thanks to Knappertsbuschs craggy visage, imposing presence on the podium and decades of Wagnerian experience at Bayreuth. At a time when Wagners Parsifal was still experienced as a primarily sacred music drama, the major works of Bruckner were likewise understood in semi-sacred terms as concert-hall rites, and who better to pierce their mysteries than Parsifals pre-eminent interpreter? Knappertsbusch began recording Bruckner for Decca in 1954, with the Third. The Fourth and Fifth quickly followed, also from Vienna, and then the Eighth arrived as an appendix from Munich, first issued on the Westminster label in 1963. By then the conductors readings of Romantic repertoire had become less impulsive, even more monumental in concept, but still lightened by a natural feeling for the dance rhythms in Bruckners scherzos and Landler themes.

Knappertsbusch persisted in conducting from editions prepared by Bruckners pupils, notably the Schalk brothers, with their liberal re-scorings and cuts, to the finales in particular all outlined in a perceptive booklet essay by Antony Hodgson. In the light of recent scholarship and a more nuanced perspective on Bruckners evolving intentions with the composing and revising of his symphonies, these performances gain a certain, compelling authenticity of their own.

No Brucknerian can afford to be without them.