Sym.5: Botstein / LPO

The reverential tone in Bruckner's music due to the composer's abiding religious beliefs is marked by his tendency to punctuate his resonating, cathedral-like passages with blazes of brass. Rich with thematic permutations, Bruckner's works utilize elaborate cross rhythms and dramatic shifts with melodies that virtually float through various harmonic regions and modulations. But Bruckner was notorious for always tinkering with his works and as a result he never passed down for posterity any version of this symphony (or many of his others) that can truly be said to be "definitive." In this regard, the Fifth symphony is generally performed in either the Haas or Nowak editions of 1878.
The relatively unknown Schalk version of 1894 recorded here represents a truncated and somewhat faster version of the work, a fascinating departure from what we normally expect of the grandiloquent expansiveness so commonly expected of the composer. Whether the composer actually gave his official assent to Schalk remains in dispute. But for the devoted Brucknerite who would like to have this curio as an addition to recordings of the Haas and Nowak editions, this premiere recording of the work is a must-have.