The first editions of Bruckner's works published by Theodor Rättig, Albert Gutmann, Haslinger-Schlesinger-Lienau and Ludwig Doblinger during and slightly after Bruckner's lifetime tended to "incorporate orchestral retouching, alterations in phrasing, articulation, and dynamics, and added tempo and expression markings," and on occasion were cut.
Cooke judges all these publications as "spurious" because they "did not represent Bruckner's own intentions", while Korstvedt classifies them into three categories: Korstvedt argues that it was not uncommon for differences to exist between the autograph manuscripts and the first publications of musical works in the late 19th century, and that while the discrepancies in Bruckner's case are "unusually pronounced" they are not "essentially aberrant.
"[4] He points to the example of Verdi's Falstaff, whose musical text contains substantial contributions from the leader of the orchestra of La Scala which were apparently welcomed by the composer.
[4] Robert Haas produced a critical edition based on Bruckner's original scores during the 1930s, that was endorsed by the Third Reich.
While the Allies enforced denazification, Haas' work was frowned upon and his rival Leopold Nowak was appointed to produce a whole new edition from scratch.
[5] From the 1950s onwards, Nowak revised and re-issued the editions of Haas, Wöss, Oeser and Orel.
[6][7] However, when the manuscripts became available in microfilm, it was found that the passages that Haas had allegedly mixed in from earlier manuscripts were actually present, but crossed out in the manuscript that Haas worked with; Bruckner wrote a letter to the conductor Felix Weingartner, in which he mentioned the cut passages and hoped that they will prove "valid for posterity, and for a circle of friends and connoisseurs".
This revision, which is conform to Bruckner's manuscript, has been recorded by Daniel Barenboim with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.
[9] Some convinced Brucknerians, as Eliahu Inbal, Georg Tintner and, more recently, Simone Young and Marcus Bosch, have recorded the "forgotten" first versions of Symphonies No.
[10][11] The complete 1876 version of the Symphony was premiered by Richard Pittman and the New England Philharmonic Orchestra on 2 March 2019 in Boston, Massachusetts.
The premiere of Cohrs’ edition together with the sketches of the Finale issued by John Alan Phillips have been recorded by Nikolaus Harnoncourt.
This new edition has been premiered by Peter Oundjian with the Yale Symphony Orchestra on 27 October 2017.