Chailly opens Linz Brucknerfest with Tchaikovsky symphony

Riccardo Chailly and the Filarmonica della Scala opened the 2026 Brucknerfest in Linz on Friday with a concert at the Brucknerhaus, ORF reported. The event took place on Anton Bruckner’s 202nd birthday, September 4.

The programme’s main work was not by Bruckner but Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4 in F minor, Op. 36. Composed in 1877, around the same time as Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony, the work is known in the music world as Tchaikovsky’s “Fate Symphony”. Its opening fanfare motif runs through the piece, which combines lyrical passages with more forceful instrumentation.

The concert was broadcast live from the Brucknerhaus’s Great Hall to the neighbouring Danube Park. Chailly and the Milan-based orchestra received sustained applause from the audience in the hall.

Two works by Sergei Rachmaninoff preceded the symphony: the short symphonic poem Op. 7, “The Rock”, and his Piano Concerto No. 4 in G minor, Op. 40. Written exactly 100 years ago after Rachmaninoff’s emigration to the United States, the concerto combines the Romantic tradition with an openness to the American modernism of the period.

Russian pianist Alexander Malofeev, who lives in Berlin, performed the demanding piano part. The 25-year-old won the renowned Tchaikovsky Competition at the age of 13.

The International Brucknerfest Linz will officially open on September 13. A children’s Klangwolke is scheduled for September 9, followed on September 12 by the visualised Linz Klangwolke “ATTheEndLinz”, created by Felix Breisach, in the Danube Park.