Discography
The first commercial recording was made by Oskar Fried with the Berlin State Opera Orchestra in 1924 for Polydor. Along with the Fourth, the Seventh is the most popular Bruckner symphony both in the concert hall and on record.
Herbert von Karajan's last recording with the Vienna Philharmonic, 23 April 1989, three months before his death, on the Deutsche Grammophon label, of the Haas edition of the 1885 score, has been singled out by Norman Lebrecht as #80 in his list of the 100 best recordings, and described as "more human and vulnerable" than his earlier Berlin recording. In reviewing the 1999 recording by Kurt Sanderling, the critic David Hurwitz listed as reference (benchmark) recordings of Bruckner's Seventh those by Eugen Jochum in 1952, Bernard Haitink in 1978, Karajan in 1989, and Günter Wand in 1999. Stephen Johnson prefers Karl Böhm's recording with the Vienna Philharmonic, saying that Böhm balances "clear-sighted formal understanding with a more fluid, supple approach to phrasing." The vast majority of modern recordings use vibrato for the strings, with Roger Norrington's recording with the Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart des SWR being a notable exception.
The chamber arrangement has been recorded, by among others, the Thomas Christian Ensemble, proving to one reviewer "beyond doubt that it simply takes more than 10 musicians, no matter how good they are, to play a Bruckner symphony." and the Linos Ensemble.
Read more about this topic: Symphony No. 7 (Bruckner)