Anton Bruckner: Bruckner's Decision (Arthaus DVD)

Joachim Bauer, Sophie von Kessel, Michael Ponti, Peter Fricke, Peter von Fontano and, in the role of Richard Wagner: Joachim Kaiser

The dramatization of a severe professional and personal crisis in the life of Anton Bruckner, who has to make the most important decision he will ever make: whether to stay in his hometown of Linz as a teacher and organist or go to Vienna to work as a composer. This period of soul-searching makes his later symphonies all the more powerful.

At the age of 43, Anton Bruckner still has not yet developed his full musical genius. Although everything inside him is striving towards music he finds one excuse after another to turn away from his vocation. Having completed every imaginable course of study in music, he is now confronted with the decision of his life: should he go to Vienna and complete his work as a composer, or should he remain in his home town of Linz as a teacher and organist?

Director Jan Schmidt-Garre‘s work is, like much of Bruckner‘s music, poetic and beautiful, with a sense of timelessness.