Symphony No.4 in E-flat major has been one of Bruckner's most popular works ever since its first performance in Vienna in 1881. It is often called the ‘Romantic', a nickname that Bruckner himself used, most probably in reference to the literary genre of the medieval romance.

What was performed in Vienna in 1881 was a second, revised version of the symphony, which had actually already seen first light in 1874. Despite the success of the revised version, further revisions took place before publication, resulting in the so-called '1888 version' recorded here. Although this remained the preferred version for several decades, it later became discredited, as it was assumed that the revisions it contained were the product of others, not of the composer himself.

The rehabilitation of the 1888 version is to a large extent due to the efforts of the musicologist Benjamin Korstvedt, who in 2004 prepared the first modern edition of the 1888 version for the Bruckner Collected Works edition. In his liner notes to this disc, Korstvedt discusses this background, giving a number of interesting illustrations of the differences between editions.