Symphony No. 5

    The symphony is accursed - nobody understands it....I wish I
    could conduct the first performance 50 years after my death.

    Mahler

Mahler's Fifth Symphony, composed 1901-2 and orchestrated in 1903, gave
him considerable trouble, but this time with the orchestration, especially the
percussion, which he revised extensively after the premiere, given in Cologne
on October 19, 1904.

The Fifth is the first of Mahler's great central trilogy of instrumental
symphonies, and remains the most popular - presumably because, as far as
"meaning" is concerned, it is the least problematic.

This is the symphony with the famous Adagietto movement - as featured in
Visconti's "Death in Venice", and at JFK's funeral (or, according to one
correspondent, RFK's funeral).

Since the last version of this survey I have changed my primary
recommendation, and my favourite performance is now that of the RPO under
Japanese conductor Michiyoshi Inoue. This is a live performance, recorded in
the Royal Festival Hall, and has much of the same electricity as the legendary
Barbirolli, except that Inoue manages to keep the tension up during the finale,
despite a similarly slow tempo. This tempo enables Inoue to pull off a truly
stunning coup de theatre towards the close of the work: where the big chorale
(first heard in the second movement) reappears to crown the fugue, Inoue can,
unlike virtually every other conductor I have heard, actually speed up rather
than slow down - an extraordinary effect. You will want to join in the applause
at the end.

Barbirolli 1960s recording still sounds extremely well, and has now been
remastered onto a single CD: in fact a short horn passage, unaccountably
missing from the original LP, was rerecorded by the original horn player
(Nicholas Bush, and not, as previous version of this survey suggested, Alan
Civil) in the same hall, specifically for the reissue! There is a real sense of
electricity about this performance, which you can feel merely by sampling the
opening bars: when the entire orchestra enters after the trumpet's initial fanfares
I guarantee a shiver will run down your spine. If the performance has a flaw it
is that Barbirolli cannot quite maintain the tension throughout his slow finale.
Nonetheless, this is truly a great performance.

Leonard Bernstein's second (VPO) recording from 1987 is also a fabulous
performance - one of the best of his second cycle. My other option would be
the 1988 LPO/Tennstedt (EMI) recorded live in the Royal Festival Hall at
Tennstedt's 'comeback' concert after a bout of treatment for cancer. This
strikes me as being perhaps Tennstedt's finest Mahler to date; true there are a
couple of minor fluffs in the playing, but there is real electricity here. The
critics seem to have found this a controversial performance, but I can't see
why.

There is a remarkable performance, again by Scherchen, on Harmonia Mundi.
For some reason though - to get the work under an hour for radio broadcast? -
there is ahuge cut in the central scherzo, reducing it to 5 minutes and thus
making it the shortest, not the longest, movement. (The cut is well-managed,
but it's still a cut dammit! And there is another, smaller one, in the finale)
Nonetheless, a remarkable achievement. Who says the French (it's the ORTF)
can't play Mahler? Well, the authors of the Penguin Guide apparently. Their
latest (1995) yearbook has finally discovered this disc, which was issued in
1988 (what does this tell you?) calls this performance a "travesty". But this is
merely one of a series of ludicrous judgments which tell me that, whatever else
their merits, these guys do not love Mahler.

Fans of Scherchen's unique way with Mahler might also want to investigate his
1950s recording- this one is complete - which is available in an acceptable
transfer on Palladio.

Some of the late Bruno Maderna's Mahler is to be found on a 4CD Arkadia set
which includes the Third, Fifth, Seventh and Ninth symphonies. Maderna's
Fifth is a fine conception, although his Italian Radio orchestra are not always
up to the challenge, particularly the strings who lost it completely in the faster
passages of the scherzo and who are apparently caught on the hop by
Maderna's sudden decelerando about two minutes into the finale.

Nevertheless there are some fine things in this performance - particularly the
second movement, where Maderna brings out the counterpoint more clearly
than usual - and, despite an indifferent mono recording, this can safely be
recommended to those interested in Maderna or Mahler conducting styles.