All of the great symphonists have their defining characteristic, whether it’s Haydn’s wit, Mozart’s elegance, or the revolutionary power of Beethoven. Where the music of the Austrian composer Anton Bruckner is concerned, conductor Manfred Honeck immediately identifies its major feature. “It has enormous spirituality in it,” he tells Apple Music Classical. Honeck should know. An Austrian himself, he has many years’ experience conducting Bruckner, and his new recording of the Seventh Symphony with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra plumbs deep into the music’s wellsprings of emotion. But where exactly does the spiritual component in Bruckner come from, and what type of spirituality is it? Look at the life, Honeck suggests, if you want to know the secrets of the music. “As a boy, Bruckner was sent to the monastery at St. Florian, where he played the organ and sang in the choir every day. He experienced all of the things that happened during Mass, evensong, and the liturgy, and absorbed them into his being.” A sense of religious ritual is palpable in the magisterial slow movement of the Seventh Symphony, one of Bruckner’s most memorable creations. “You can hear him thinking about life: what is the sense of life, and what happens after life,” says Honeck. “And you can also hear that Bruckner suffered in his own life. His music was not always welcomed or understood, which sometimes made him very sad.” Another major influence in the Seventh’s slow movement is Richard Wagner, the composer Bruckner revered above all others. “Wagner died in 1883, when Bruckner was composing the slow movement,” Honeck explains, “and so Bruckner decided to include an instrument called the Wagner tuba in his memory.” The sorrowful lament of four Wagner tubas is heard in the movement’s concluding section, as Bruckner mourns the master’s passing. “It’s one of the greatest movements in music history,” says Honeck. There are other sides to Bruckner, too, beside his religious devotion. His love of the natural world, and of Austrian folk music, can both be clearly discerned in the Pittsburgh Symphony’s sharply expressive performance of the Seventh Symphony’s “Scherzo” movement. “Don’t forget that every weekend Bruckner played viola and violin in a folk trio—he knew that music very well,” Honeck comments. “And dance forms like the Ländler and polka found their way naturally into his music.” Birdsong also features in the Seventh’s “Scherzo,” Honeck continues. “When the conductor of the symphony’s Austrian premiere, Karl Muck, praised the main theme of the ‘Scherzo,’ Bruckner replied, ‘It’s good, but unfortunately not by me. The melody was sung by a cockerel perched next to my house.’” To interpret Bruckner’s music correctly, Honeck feels that it is crucial to reconnect with the 19th-century milieu he knew and lived in. “The tradition of knowing how the music was played 150 years ago is getting a little bit lost in our time,” he says. “One of my missions is to help orchestras understand how, for instance, folk dances were played in Bruckner’s era. When I came to Pittsburgh in 2008, I started playing music by Johann Strauss at our Thanksgiving concerts. It was a wonderful experience, because the way you play Strauss waltzes is exactly the way you have to treat Bruckner’s dance rhythms too.” In the end, however, it is the healing spirituality of Bruckner, abundantly evident in the Seventh Symphony, which for Honeck marks it out as truly special. “Even when the music seems melancholy, dark or somber, Bruckner is always searching and looking up. His harmonies can make you forget every pain, every depression, every bad thing,” he says. “And once you ‘get’ this sound, you will never lose it. You will always want to listen to Bruckner.”