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義大利指揮家托斯卡尼尼（Arturo Toscanini，1867~1957）在他漫長的指揮生涯曾一度迷上布魯克納的音樂，並於1933年率領著紐約愛樂協會管絃樂團演出了第四號以及第七號交響曲。
日本ARIA唱片行率先在今年三月發行了第七號交響曲的錄音，網路版也開始流傳，也許在不久的將來，我們可以盼得到正規盤的出現。

節錄自1933年美國布魯克納協會：

TOSCANINI AND BRUCKNER
I doubt very much whether any other conductor devotes as much reflection, as much medication, and as much intensity of feeling to the study of a work as does Toscanini. I am sure chat none is as indefatigable in the search for spiritual as well as material perfection. He not only assimilates in his phenomenal memory the whole complicated musical structure, elaborated by the composer with so much care; he analyses the work and sifts it through his clarifying imagination with an insatiable interest for details and an unflagging progress towards an ideal. Toscanini's method of study is simple enough. He reads the score away from the piano, often, at night, in bed. Then, again, he spends hours at the keyboard, playing the music from orchestral score, and with consummate ease. While he is very short- sighted, he has no difficulty whatever in reading the smallest script once he has put on his pince-nez. He doesn't even bend forward conspicuously in order to bring his eyes close to the page. That he should find it irksome, at times, to read at sight some of the high- towering modern scores, is hardly surprising. In that respect he is surely no exception. I have heard other musicians complain that one ought to have some perpendicular mode of locomotion for travelling up and down such musical sky-scrapers. For how can you, when your eyes, say, are on the level with the lowest staff, see simultaneously the notes on the highest staff, about two feet above your head? During these periods of study Toscanini is completely wrapped up in the particular music under scrutiny. There is a very noticeable difference, however, in his manner of approaching works that do not appeal to his taste and works that kindle his interest. In the former case, as I have often heard the maestro tell, be postpones his study until the eleventh hour. In the latter case he is eager to begin immediately, and once he has started he can hardly tear himself away from the work.

It is inspiring to witness Toscanini's enthusiasm, his almost pathetic consecration to the interests of the composer. .Repeatedly, during his preparation both of the Seventh and the Romantic Symphony, I had the privilege of hearing him play from the score. And. I never saw him dedicate his well-nigh clairvoyant interpretative powers to any music with more ardor. Tirelessly he sought for ways and means-perhaps through slight modifications of tempo or dynamics, perhaps through stress of emphasis or accent-that might make the composer's message more clear, more trenchant, more effective. And how his face would light up when he had discovered a way of achieving the desired result.

Toscanini may introduce a slight revision in the score, adopting under certain conditions a most conservatively considered cut or amending slightly the instrumental web. This he does rarely, however, and only when he has convinced himself beyond all hesitation that he is realizing thereby more nearly the composer's intentions.
I seem to have wandered far afield from the Fourth Symphony of Bruckner. That he liked the work greatly he left no doubt while playing this or that page for me from the Partitur with an enthusiasm evidenced in every fibre of his body. While I was fully aware that he had taken a liking for Bruckner since he decided to perform with his great American Orchestra the Seventh Symphony I was surprised to find him more enamored, apparently, of the Romantic than of the later work. He as much as admitted, at any rare, that he found fewer weak spots in the orchestration. Personally I hope that Toscanini's enthusiasm for Bruckner will increase with every one of his works he makes his own. It is interesting to note that he not only was conducting the Fourth Symphony for the first time in his life when he produced it here, but that he had never before heard the work played by any one else.