I have listened to all of these performances of the Bruckner symphonies, led by Markus Poscher, with the Bruckner Orchestra Linz and the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra. I find them all to be compelling interpretations, with playing to match those interpretations. Reviewers like Ralph Moore (of MWI) and David Hurwitz (of ClassicsToday) have found them to be much more variable.

On the subject of Markus Poschner, he was just named (on November 18, 2024), the next music director of my local full-time, year-round, professional orchestra, the Utah Symphony. He succeeds Thierry Fischer (now music director emeritus), who was music director beginning with the 2009-10 season, and ending with the 2022-23 season. Fischer only conducted Bruckner's 4th (1878-80 version) and 5th symphonies (the orchestra's first performance of that work), and he was scheduled to conduct two performances of the 9th in late 2020, before the COVID pandemic upended the programming for the announced 2020-21 season,

I have attended six concert performances of three programs led by Markus Poschner with the Utah Symphony (since late 2022), and three final rehearsals (two of which were open to the public). In each rehearsal, at certain key points, like many or even most conductors, Poschner vocalized the precise articulation that he was seeking for certain passages. I find him to be an excellent conductor and musician.

Although historically the Utah Symphony is perhaps still best remembered (despite Thierry Fischer's nine commercial recordings) for some pioneering US performances and commercial recordings of the Mahler symphonies, I hope that during his tenure Markus Poschner will program all of the Bruckner symphonies. The Utah Symphony did play Bruckner's Symphony No. 0 in September 1977, in two performances (both in Linz, Austria) on its European tour, at the International Bruckner Festival. Then, in October 1977, the Utah Symphony, again under music director Maurice Abravanel, led two additional performances of Symphony No. 0, this time in Utah, to include Salt Lake City. The orchestra has not performed Bruckner's Symphony No. 00, No. 1, and No.2. Abravanel conducted Bruckner's 4th, 7th, and 9th symphonies, but each on only one occasion during his tenure as music director of the Utah Symphony from 1947-1979. This is at least according to my archival research so far regarding the Utah Symphony.

If all goes well (which I expect it will based on his track record of principal/chief conductorships), I expect Poschner's Utah Symphony tenure (which begins with full duties in the 2027-28 season), to last 10 to possibly even 14 seasons, from 2027 to 2037 or even 2040. While I doubt that Poschner and the Utah Symphony will make even a single commercial recording of any of the Bruckner symphonies, I would favor a commercial recording program that included Bruckner's Overture in G minor, his March in D minor, and his Three Orchestral Pieces, paired with Franz Schmidt's Variations on a Hussar's Song and Schmidt's 1931 orchestration of his Chaconne for Orchestra in D minor. Poschner programmed and conducted those five Bruckner compositions with the Bruckner Orchestra Linz on September 8, 2024. However, perhaps those were also recorded in concert (or a studio session), for later commercial release on the Austrian Capriccio label.

Will Poschner now go on to record the Bruckner Masses? Helgoland? Psalm 150? He did give performances of the Te Deum and Missa Solemnis in B minor in the second half of 2024 with the Bruckner Orchestra Linz.

Circling back to the recordings in question reviewed by Roy Westbrook, despite pointed criticism by others of some of Poschner's performances in this Bruckner symphony cycle on Capriccio/Naxos, I find Poschner's view of Bruckner's music to be refreshing and in many cases suitably re-imagined for the first half of the 21st century. It was a project well worth undertaking, and in many ways compares favorably to the most "prominent" such commercial recorded cycle designed around the 200th anniversary of Bruckner's birth in 2024: Christian Thielemann with the Vienna Philharmonic on Sony (CD, download, DVD).