Anton Bruckner dedicates his 9th Symphony to "Dear God", knowing full well that his heart disease will kill him.

When he died in October 1896, the news of his death was merely a marginal note in the Viennese newspaper Neue Freie Presse. However, everyone can see from it that his estate contains "sketches for the fourth movement of his ninth symphony", of which only three movements had been completed. The next day, with the room still unsealed, the souvenir hunters arrive. "Authorised and unauthorised persons" descend on the papers "like vultures", according to Bruckner's horrified doctor. Numerous manuscripts are stolen. When the rest is sifted through six days later, there are still 75 score sheets of the Finale of the 9th Symphony – and even these do not remain together.

And so, at the time of Anton Bruckner's death, only three complete movements remained, a triad with an unfathomable perfection inherent in the work. The symphonist Bruckner's "last word" is therefore not an impetuous Allegro, but an Adagio lasting over 20 minutes, unprecedented in its depth and harmony. In it, Anton Bruckner casts a shadow back to Richard Wagner, whom he so admired – and ahead to Arnold Schoenberg. And like Gustav Mahler, who also ended his "Ninth" years later with an overpowering adagio, Anton Bruckner did not live to see the premiere of his last symphony and its aftermath.

To date, countless composers and Bruckner scholars have attempted to undo the body-snatching and reconstruct the manuscripts of the fourth movement into a whole "in the spirit of the composer". François-Xavier Roth and the Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne remain true to the original three-movement version in their highly acclaimed Bruckner cycle, and this album marks an important milestone in the work's discography.