Wrong music

In THE Edinburgh International Festival brochure, a concert at the Usher Hall was sold as a performance of Bruckner's Symphony No 8 given by the Cleveland Orchestra, along with some pieces by Ives.

After the success of his 7th Symphony, Bruckner wrote a new symphony and sent it to conductor Hermann Levi, in 1887, hoping for approval and a commitment to a performance. Levi replied in the negative, Bruckner was horrified and proceeded to rewrite the entire piece over the course of the next two to three years. This is the work known as Bruckner's 8th Symphony and it is acknowledged as a masterpiece.

However, on Tuesday, we were given a performance of the original, rejected work with, as far as I could see, no publicity of any sort prior to the performance. As the first movement progressed, I became more confused, finally managing to peer at the concert programme to find in tiny writing underneath the work's title, (first version, 1887).

This was a very fine performance, and might have interested some musicologists who had not heard the original version, but it was manifestly not Bruckner's wonderful masterpiece.

It was as if we had gone to Hamlet and heard the prince declaim: "Being or not being? Hmm. Interesting question."

The pity of it is that this is one of the truly great orchestras of the world with a very fine conductor, and their performance of the proper Symphony No 8 would have been life-enhancing. Why did we have to endure the rejected one?

BRIAN BANNATYNE-SCOTT

Murrayfield Drive

Edinburgh