Riccardo Muti’s in-triplicate annual appearances with the Vienna Philharmonic are invariably the sensation of the Salzburg Festival’s concert lineup, and never more so than when he programs music that belongs to the Viennese. Muti’s transcendental way with the Schubert symphonies—the 19-year-old composer’s enigmatic “Tragic” most emphatically included—has been a matter of record for decades. Though Muti’s forays into Bruckner are less frequent, they too are renowned. His Salzburg accounts of the Seventh symphony in 2023 and more especially the concert-length Eighth in 2024 had critics reaching for superlatives and left cognoscenti speechless with awe. The much-revised third and last of Bruckner’s masses is a score to which the composer was especially attached. In the expert opinion of one contemporary, it ranked with Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis. Brahms was seen to applaud a performance so enthusiastically that Bruckner thanked him personally. And as he felt his end approaching, Bruckner let it be known that to hear it once more would be the crowning experience of his life. Such connections are never lost on Muti, or on those who listen to his performances with open hearts. —Matthew Gurewitsch