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Adeodatas Tauragis, one of Lithuania’s foremost musicologists, wrote: “Dozens of books have been written about Anton Bruckner, the most famous Austrian symphonist of the second half of the 19th century. But how differently his work is regarded! Some consider his symphonies to be the most significant after Beethoven, full of noble feelings and spiritual renewal, while others accuse Bruckner of being verbose, rhetorical and prosaic. There are enough arguments on both sides, but the number of voices of criticism is diminishing. What is clear is that the Schubert-Bruckner-Mahler oeuvre forms a coherent lineage of so-called ‘song symphonism’, a distinctive and significant branch of symphonic music in the second half of the 19th century. Bruckner’s music impresses with its epic monumentality, powerful sound and majestic ‘gothic’ forms. To reproach him for his long works is to reproach him for being Bruckner...”

Yes, his Eighth Symphony is the largest and longest (its duration is around an hour and a half), and it is also the largest in terms of orchestral line-up. It was composed and revised between 1884 and 1892. Bruckner was only recognised as a composer after the performance of his Seventh Symphony in 1884, at the age of fifty, before which his works were often rejected by orchestras as ‘unplayable’, but the premiere of his Eighth Symphony in Vienna in 1892 was finally a triumph. Audience was simply overwhelmed by the work’s grandeur, depth of thought and strength of spirit, and reviewers wrote that it was “the greatest symphony of the 19th century”. Contemporaries suggested that it should be called The Apocalyptic.