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Read on to discover the story behind Bruckner’s Fifth Symphony and its best recordings…<\/strong><\/p> No less a luminary than the conductor Wilhelm Furtw\u00e4ngler, when speaking at the German Bruckner Society in 1939, remarked that Anton Bruckner<\/strong><\/a>, a life-long devout Catholic, \u2018did not work for the present; in his art he thought only of eternity and he created for eternity\u2026\u2019 His masses and symphonies<\/a><\/strong> are indisputable testament to that judgment.<\/p> Born in 1824 in Upper Austria, the son of a village schoolmaster and organist, Bruckner showed distinct musical talent from an early age. On the death of his father, he entered the monastery school at St Florian as a choirboy at the age of 13.<\/p> He left only temporarily to train as an elementary schoolteacher in Linz, returning to St Florian in 1845 to teach for ten years before he became the abbey church\u2019s chief organist and Kappellmeister, during which time he composed many choral works, notably his Requiem in D minor (1849). Finally abandoning the security of St Florian, he became firstly Linz Cathedral organist, then succeeded his mentor Simon Sechter as professor of harmony and counterpoint at the Vienna Conservatory in 1868. This was despite a nervous breakdown two years earlier, aged 42. <\/p> Bruckner was vilified as nothing more than a country bumpkin by the Viennese \u00e9lite and was also the object of partisan scorn by the most celebrated critic of the day, Eduard Hanslick, who was contemptuous of his admiration for the work of Richard Wagner<\/a> <\/strong>\u2013 remarkably, despite Hanslick\u2019s opposition as Dean of Faculty, Bruckner was appointed to the University of Vienna in 1875. But above all else, Bruckner craved recognition as a composer of symphonies in the tradition of Beethoven<\/a><\/strong> and Schubert<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>Who was Bruckner?<\/h2>