Bruckner: Symphony No. 5 in B flat major

My score of Bruckner’s Symphony No. 5 has a statement at the start: ‘Duration: 80 minutes’. Actually I have only heard one conductor, Celibidache, take that long over the work. Normally performance are somewhere in the 70s, and the fastest I had come across was Furtwängler at 68 minutes.

But this new recording is 62, which is strikingly rapid. One of the odd features of it is that the great slow movement is shorter here than the Scherzo which follows it. The outer movements are brisker than usual, but not much.

Our rating

3

Michael Beek

Published: January 20, 2012 at 4:32 pm

COMPOSERS: Bruckner
LABELS: Chandos
WORKS: Symphony No. 5
PERFORMER: Hague Residentie Orchestra/Neeme Järvi
CATALOGUE NO: CHSA 5080 (hybrid CD/SACD)

My score of Bruckner’s Symphony No. 5 has a statement at the start: ‘Duration: 80 minutes’. Actually I have only heard one conductor, Celibidache, take that long over the work. Normally performance are somewhere in the 70s, and the fastest I had come across was Furtwängler at 68 minutes.

But this new recording is 62, which is strikingly rapid. One of the odd features of it is that the great slow movement is shorter here than the Scherzo which follows it. The outer movements are brisker than usual, but not much.

But the second movement is one of Bruckner’s great adagios, yet here it sounds as if it were marked andante. And its slow cumulative power is not achievable at this speed, superbly though The Hague Residentie Orchestra plays it.

In the first three movements Neeme Järvi indulges in fluctuations of tempo that are most unusual these days, though they might well be what Bruckner would have expected. It’s hard to know: this is an endlessly perplexing work, though clearly a great one.

Bruckner delights in having themes of sharply contrasting speeds in the first movement, and if the conductor then imposes his own variations of tempo it becomes still harder to tell what its structure is.

Yet in the monumental last movement, which combines massive fugues with a chorale theme and other disparate elements, Järvi is relatively dogged. I think that listeners unfamiliar with the work would be more bewildered than they need be. Michael Tanner

Reviews Editor, BBC Music Magazine

Michael is the Reviews Editor of BBC Music Magazine. He looks after the 26 pages of recording and book reviews in the magazine each month, deciding what will be reviewed – no easy task with so much being sent in for consideration! Michael joined the team in 2018, following ten years as a freelance film music journalist and fifteen years at St George's Bristol. Film and television music is his favourite thing, and when he’s not listening to things to be reviewed in the mag, Michael loves nothing more than to listen to the music of John Williams and James Horner – his favourite film composers. He was the Editor of MusicfromtheMovies.com and has written for the BBC Proms, BBC Concert Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Albert Hall, Hollywood in Vienna and Silva Screen Records. His favourite writing gigs so far have been programmes for each of the Doctor Who Proms, soundtrack album notes for Doctor Who – Series 4 and Torchwood – Children of Earth, plus programmes and features for live concert screenings of Jurassic Park, Gladiator, Back to the Future and Raiders of the Lost Ark. While he never got the chance to interview the late James Horner, Michael was delighted to spend an hour on the phone with John Williams for the 2020 Christmas issue of BBC Music Magazine. Also a presenter, Michael has hosted concerts and live events for Bristol Film Festival and St George's Bristol, plus Debbie Wiseman's ‘Music and Words from Wolf Hall’ shows at venues across the UK. Michael has worked regularly with Debbie Wiseman over the years, writing concert programmes and scripts (for Terry Wogan and Simon Bates) and producing her 2011 album Piano Stories.