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Berlin Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall This Week

This week, the Berlin Philharmonic, one of the two-or-three orchestras which can legitimately claim to be among the best in the world, returns to Carnegie Hall for the first time since 2009, performing three concerts under Simon Rattle, now in his 10th season as music director. It is always a privilege whenever this astonishing orchestra comes to New York, especially given that these will be the BPO's only North American appearances this season.

The centerpiece of Berlin's Carnegie stand will be Friday night's performance of Bruckner's 9th Symphony, in a brand-new completed version by Nicola Samale, Giuseppe Mazzuca, John A. Phillips and Benjamin-Gunnar Cohrs. (The work had it's premiere in Berlin two weeks ago.) For many - including your's truly - this is messing with one of music's great sacred cows, revered for over a century as a three-movement fragment. But, if anyone can pull it off, it's Rattle, who's also spent the past 20 years tirelessly promoting Deryck Cooke's completion of Mahler's 10th symphony (which he recorded with the Berlin Phil in 2000.)

According to Carnegie's website, there is less pure speculation going on here than you might think:

"Of the 647 bars in the reconstruction, 208 are completely by Bruckner, for most of the remaining bars, string parts, drafts of the wind parts or initial sketches were available – there were only 37 bars for which there was no music at all by the composer. Simon Rattle says, 'Everything that is strange about this finale is 100% Bruckner. And one can see the terror and the fear and the passion which he was going through in his life at that time.'"

You can read more about the reconstruction on the Berlin Phil's site, or watch Rattle and Jeremy Geffen above. Tickets for this and the other two concerts are sold out, but Carnegie's site says to check with the box office for possible availability. 

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