Bruckner: Symphony No. 5 in B flat major

No less an interpreter of Bruckner than Günter Wand once called the Fifth Symphony ‘the most perplexing work in the composer’s canon’. Under Otto Klemperer performances of the Symphony (which he had substantially to relearn when the new Robert Haas edition restored a 122-bar cut in the finale) were always something of an event, even if audiences outside Austria and Germany – especially American ones in the late 1930s, and Walter Legge in the 1950s – at first found the work something of a trial.

Klemperer first conducted the Symphony in June 1927, in his last days as general music director at the Wiesbaden Opera. He repeated this programme in October 1932 when he had become sole director of the Berlin Staatskapelle concerts, ignoring a request from Furtwängler to substitute another symphony to avoid duplication with the Berlin Philharmonic later in the season. Enthusiastic reviews preferred Klemperer’s ‘sharper outlines and clear, cooler light’ to Furtwängler’s ‘essentially romantic’ approach. The Berliner Börsen Courier found that ‘Klemperer gave the enormous Symphony all the splendour of colour, the pathos, the hymn-like fervour it calls for. The structure was entirely clear, never before has one experienced the intellectual unity of the finale so strongly... precisely because Klemperer never exaggerated... everything was contained by a calm that comes with complete maturity’. It was Furtwängler who had to change his programme that season.

This is now the ninth performance of a Klemperer Schubert Unfinished to be preserved. It follows an early 1924 studio version with the Berlin Staatskapelle (one of Klemperer’s first discs), the EMI Philharmonia recording of 1963, and ‘live’ performances in Budapest, Turin, Jerusalem, Munich, Vienna and London (the last two also available on Testament). The Symphony was always a Klemperer favourite and one which responded well to his characteristic forward woodwind balance... Klemperer’s choice of the Symphony to open the programme for Bruckner’s Fifth made for a less abrasive, perhaps more relevant start to the concert than the Beethoven and Mahler he would have preferred before the war.

This recording of Bruckner’s Fifth Symphony had been published several times: USA, 1982/84, Bruno Walter Society (Denon CD 536); Germany, 1989, DG (471 297-2); Japan, 2005, Opus Kura (OPK 7013) and Russia, 2006, Melodiya (RCD 10 01103). There were also other releases, most of them of questionable sound quality. Closer investigation revealed that various sources lay behind these reissues, namely some good and some not so good editing of the tapes, which had been ‘abducted’ to Russia. Melodiya and Opus Kura had access to better copies than DG, who had to rely on the first delivery of tapes in 1987. The quality of editing and digital processing of the tapes varied considerably. For instance, resonance added, ambient noise reduced (to the detriment of musical quality), dynamic effects curtailed; in one case the digital mastering had added a disturbing hum throughout the recording. The present release is sourced from the original tape kept in the archive of Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg (RBB, formerly SFB), a photo of the box for which is shown in this booklet. The tape needed only minimal reworking as the quality is very good. It is indeed quite astonishing how natural, ample, transparent and full the orchestral sound is; only in one place was remedial intervention necessary.

Two pizzicatos were missing at the beginning of the finale, but these could be borrowed from the identical figure in the opening movement.

It should also be noted that the instrumental pitch, though raised in the majority of previous reissues – in the 1989 DG issue, for instance, A = 444 Hz with correspondingly shorter running time – has been left here at the original A = 440Hz as established at the international standardising conference held in London in 1939.

And so the Odyssey of the Furtwängler recording of Bruckner’s Fifth Symphony is now, after nearly seventy years, brought to its conclusion. Admirers of Wilhelm Furtwängler’s art, and of the excellence of the Berlin Philharmonic, now have an opportunity to hear afresh a brilliant interpretation which shows, amongst other things, Furtwängler’s temperamental affinity with a work often regarded as difficult and unapproachable. And it is an especially happy outcome that this memento of the great conductor should be issued to mark his 125th birthday on 25 January 2011.

(Extract from the booklet note: Helge Grünewald, 2011)

This is the third instalment in PentaTone’s Bruckner Symphonies cycle with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande conducted by Marek Janowski. The previous CDs in the series have received excellent reviews.

Rarely did the première of a Bruckner symphony arouse such enthusiasm; even if, in this case, the first performance took place nearly 20 years after its composition, the work captivated listeners with its ineffable mystery, one thinks of late Beethoven, combining 'Baroque' logic with Romantic introspection. Parting company with Wagner, Bruckner had found his own path . . .