In September 2005 the NDR Sinfonieorchester and Christoph von Dohnányi had given a stimulating pairing of Bartók (the Divertimento) and Bruckner (Seventh Symphony), and they returned to the unusual, contrasting combination for the opening concerts of the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival. The slow, tenebrous fugue which begins the Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta were ‘perfectly shaped’ according to the Frankfurt Allgemeine Zeitung, thereby revealing its ‘organic, inviolable structure’. The second-half performance of Bruckner’s ‘Romantic’ Symphony forsook such programmatic allusions while ‘creating an immensely powerful atmosphere of melancholy from a distance.’