Anton Bruckner (1824 - 1896) composed the Symphony No. 4 in 1874 and revised it several times through 1888.

This is one of four LPs that EMI/Columbia released for Otto Klemperer’s 80th birthday in 1965. Bruckner’s Symphonies were relatively unknown to the record-buying public in the 1960s, when complete cycles, like Bernard Haitink’s were still in the process of being recorded. Klemperer uses the Nowak edition of 1953, based on the 1886 revision of the score and gives an idiosyncratic interpretation, with outer movements faster than you would expect from this conductor, that nonetheless preserves the architecture of symphony, captured in vintage EMI/Kingsway Hall sound.

In the review of the stereo LP in The Gramophone of may 1965, Deryck Cooke, no less, enthused: “This is one of those rare occasions when a Bruckner symphony is presented in a single span, and the blazing climaxes seem all the more inspiring because they’re revealed as growing quite naturally out of what has gone before...Klemperer’s performance has a mighty and noble objectivity throughout.”

Recorded on 18-26 September 1963 at Kingsway Hall, London.

The "golden age" of recordings was from 1955 to 1965, at the beginning of the LP and the stereo era, where pure vacuum tube amplification helped produce recordings demonstrating unparalleled fidelity and warmth, lifelike presence and illumination.

This Testament Records LP, revived from the EMI-Columbia catalogue, was remastered at EMI's Abbey Road Studios in London, using pure analogue components only, from the original studio tapes through to the cutting head, and was pressed at Pallas.