Bruckner’s Ninth by Various, Alates (2022/2022), Dirigent Robin Ticciati, South Bank Centre, London, United Kingdom

Anton Bruckner dedicated his Ninth Symphony to ‘my beloved God’. At the end of a lifetime’s spiritual striving, he poured both his unquenchable faith and his agonising doubts into the symphony – and then died before he could complete it. But even in its unfinished form, it’s overwhelming, and there’s no more thoughtful interpreter than Ticciati, a conductor who has a very special relationship with the LPO. First, though, Simon Keenlyside sets the mood with Vaughan Williams’ Five Mystical Songs: ‘Such a Truth, as ends all strife / Such a Life, as killeth death …’