Three other great recordings
Rémy Ballot (conductor)
For ‘cathedrals of sound’, try this 2016 live recording made at the composer’s final resting place in the monastery church at St Florian, where he is buried immediately below the organ. At a staggering 90 minutes, Celibidache protégé Rémy Ballot seems to be replicating his mentor’s fondness for very slow tempos. Ballot’s radical approach sometimes veers close to the grandiose, but it is heroically executed by the Altomonte Orchestra St Florian, which sounds entirely convinced. The ambience of the vast venue is superbly captured by the Gramola engineers. (Gramola 99162)
Otto Klemperer (conductor)
Of Otto Klemperer’s three recordings of the Fifth, his
1967 Royal Festival Hall performance with the New Philharmonia Orchestra is more galvanised in the finale than the studio version set down a week earlier at the Kingsway Hall (his third recording, also excellent, was made with the Vienna Philharmonic the following year). Captured in decent mono, the orchestral sound is typical of late Klemperer: monochromatic and with
little concession to tonal refinement. In the closing pages, however, he gives the brass full rein, with the NPO’S trumpeters rising from their seats to help drive home a blistering finish. (Testament SBT 21485)
Giuseppe Sinopoli (conductor)
After much deliberation, my fourth choice goes to Giuseppe Sinopoli, another maverick like Celibidache and whose interpretations also still divide opinion many years after his untimely death in 2001. This volcanic, muscularly sculpted reading of the Leopold Nowak edition, recorded live by the Dresden Staatskapelle at the German city’s Semperoper in 1999, has the benefits of glorious orchestral playing and vivid sound quality. (Deutsche Grammophon 469 5272)
And one to avoid…
Conductor Hans Knappertsbusch’s 1956 Decca recording with the Vienna Philharmonic is a relic of the bad old days of Bruckner performance, serving up Franz Schalk’s disastrously misguided edition of the score. That said, if you fancy a re-orchestrated Bruckner Five with added cymbal crashes, this is for you. Otherwise, thank God for Leopold Nowak and Robert Haas.