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Mario Venzago arrive bientôt au terme d’une intégrale des symphonies de Bruckner qui aura suscité bien des controverses. Cette fois, c’est le sommet de la série (« le couronnement symphonique du 19° siècle » selon Hugo Wolf) qu’il nous livre avec un nouvel orchestre. Cette symphonie qu’il baptise « Le purgatoire et le doute», est la plus grande et celle qui offre le plus de sentiments variés des œuvres de Bruckner, surtout dans la rédaction définitive que suit, à juste raison, le chef suisse. Elle lui inspire une lecture d’une belle tenue qui devrait recueillir les suffrages même de ceux qui ont pu être réticents à ses propositions antérieures. Ce Bruckner fluide, sans lourdeur ce qui ne veut pas dire sans grandeur est bien celui qu’il a depuis le début cherché à révéler, l’héritier de Schubert bien plus que de Wagner. (Richard Wander)  Eight symphonies by Anton Bruckner in sensational interpretations by the Swiss conductor Mario Venzago are now on the market, and it has already become quite evident that here new standards are being set. As Christoph Jetzschke wrote in klassik-heute.com, »A Bruckner edition bringing unheard-of and previously unheard things to light […]. Nobody can afford to neglect this way of viewing Bruckner.« We now at last are continuing with the Eighth Symphony in the version of 1890, the only symphonic work from Bruckner’s later years for which we have two different versions by the composer himself. Our booklet author Hartmut Becker writes : "A mystery – this is what Anton Bruckner himself called his eighth symphony. It is without the slightest doubt an exceptional work, even in the oeuvre of its composer. This fact is hardly founded on the mighty proportions of its architecture : here the fifth symphony is not inferior to it. It is instead the eighth symphony’s genuinely opulent orchestral ensemble that makes it an exception, for here the otherwise so very conservative Bruckner actually calls for harps, even ‘if possible, three’ such instruments, as he expressly indicates, and, to top things off, percussion instruments (cymbals and the triangle)! Until this time no symphonic work without programmatic ties had contained these tone colors deriving from the opera orchestra. Once again, a detail like this renders apparent just how open Bruckner was to innovations of the New German school when they seemed to be appropriate to his expressive needs".
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