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Newsletter - January 1, 2026

Newsletter - January 1, 2026

Newsletter - January 1, 2026
Welcome to the Newsletter from Abruckner.com!

As of December 31th the Discography Database and the Bruckner Archive Database have been updated. The underlined headlines below will take you to the various sections of the website where the bullet points below are featured. Please use these as guides to the new information offered since the last newsletter.

Newsletter - January 1, 2026

Sixty years ago, while studying in a college library, I put on a recording of a symphony by Anton Bruckner and, as the saying goes, things have never been the same again. I was taking a music appreciation class as an elective at the time and I kept bugging the professor about Bruckner and did so much research on the composer that when we came to the section on Late Romanticism, the professor had me teach the class about Bruckner. There wasn’t much Bruckner being played in the concert halls at that time of my discovery. The famous New York Philharmonic series of Symphonies 3-9 (with Szell, Krips and Steinberg) had just taken place several months earlier, but I did catch Eugen Jochum when he conducted the American Symphony Orchestra in Bruckner’s Symphony No. 5.

The record collecting started then too. I was a stickler for stereo in those days, so I avoided all of the historic recordings. The George Szell Bruckner Third was my first purchase (not a bad start) and the Ormandy Fifth – both on Columbia Records. I remember being very disappointed with Ormandy’s RCA Bruckner 7th. Ormandy had just moved over to RCA and they decided to switch recording venues from Town Hall in Philadelphia to the acoustically dull Academy of Music. They tried to augment the reverberation, but it didn’t work very well. In fact, these first RCA Ormandy releases offered a companion LP that gave collectors an opportunity to hear Ormandy’s earlier RCA recordings from the 1930’s. The excerpt of the Bruckner 7th with the Minneapolis Symphony stood up quite well (too well) to the new stereo release. It took me awhile to save up for the Jochum / DGG cycle – the first in stereo.

From this early collecting, the impulse to obtain at least one recording of every version of Bruckner’s symphonies took hold and then on to collecting all available recordings and amassing an archive of recordings of several thousand performances. That archive has now been passed onto the Austrian Media Library in Vienna.

Looking back, it is remarkable to think how much the work of one person can affect the life of another, but I have several friends and associates who have shared this common experience.

The Bruckner Society: Another area of activity was the reactivation of the Bruckner Society of America. The Society was founded in 1931 and was very active through the 1960’s. But things slowed down and the Society became inactive after the last publication of “Chord and Discord” in 1998. In 2009, the Society’s last president, Charles Eble past away and some of his business passed to David Hempel. I contacted David and together we were able to restore the Society’s non-profit status and allowed the Society to access its dormant assets.

Since then, we have restructured the Board of Directors and have resumed the bestowing of the Julio Kilenyi Medal of Honor to deserving individuals. Some of the more recent recipients, since our reactivation have been William Carragan, Benjamin Korstvedt, Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, Kurt Masur, Christoph von Dohnanyi, Daniel Barenboim, Hans Graf, Riccardo Chailly, Jaap van Zweden, Yannick Nezet-Seguin, Gerd Schaller and Herbert Blomstedt. In 2026, plans are in place to present medals of honor to Fabio Luisi in Dallas and Manfred Honeck in Pittsburgh.

In addition to this activity, the Society has adopted “The Bruckner Journal” as its print / online publication. The Society also offers its own line of compact discs. In the future, the Society will also maintain the Bruckner Symphony Versions Discography, which is the centerpiece of this website.

You can support all of this activity and receive access to "The Bruckner Journal" by becoming a member of the Bruckner Society of America. Donations can be made online at www.brucknersocietyamerica.org.

CASH REWARD FOR WANTED RECORDINGS. Click here for details.

LATEST NEWS AND POSTINGS

  • Any news about Bruckner that reaches my desk is posted here. After a while, interesting stories are moved to the FEATURES SECTION (below).


THE BRUCKNER ARCHIVE

  • The Bruckner Archive recording database (with over 10,400 listings) has been updated and it is easy to download as an Excel file. Many of these recordings are available to collectors and researchers. Contact me for details on how you can fill in some holes in your collection. The database is fully sortable including the ability to sort by performance date.

    As noted above, I have now added the "Pre-Donation" datafile which reflects what was held in the Archive prior to the donation of recordings to the Austrian National Library.


EDITOR'S SECTION

  • There are many subjects covered here. While the topics remain relatively static, the sections themselves are frequently updated, so make it a point to check out the various subjects under this heading.


NEW AND FEATURED RELEASES

  • A listing of new releases and exclusive recordings - many currently available in my webstore.


FUTURE RELEASES AND RECENT DISCOVERIES

  • A listing of future releases and recordings that have recently been discovered.


DOWNLOADS

  • A collection of wonderful downloads including scores and the always popular DOWNLOAD OF THE MONTH.


WEB STORE

  • The web store focuses on new Bruckner recordings and other Bruckner recordings that are not generally available. The store is divided up into sections for CDs and DVDs, books and scores, downloads, bargain samples and collectibles. Be sure to check out each section for new items. My focus is on new releases and hard-to-find items.



FEATURES

  • As stories in the LATEST NEWS AND POSTINGS section get older, those that are still relevant get moved into the FEATURES SECTION. There is a wealth of information here that you may have missed when they were first posted.


ARTICLES / GRAPHICS

  • Essays in English and other languages are entered as they are discovered or accepted.

  • New graphics (over 1,400) are frequently added.


PLEASE SUPPORT THIS SITE All the information provided on this site is available to you free-of-charge. But it is not free for me to get it to you. Recordings must be purchased as does the server space upon which this website is stored. There is an easy way for you to support this venture. Simply purchase recordings and other items in my web store. Purchases will support the ongoing expenses of operating this website.

Stay safe and happy listening!

John F. Berky