Having been a little disappointed by Claudio Abbado’s recent DVD version of Mahler’s Ninth (Euroarts, 3/05), it’s a pleasure to report that this Fifth is closer in quality to his sensational Resurrection (TDK, 12/04). It helps that the band is the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, that most exalted of all ‘ad hoc’ ensembles, rather than the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester. As Richard Osborne rather waspishly observed in these pages, the latter’s string playing can be ‘cultured in the sense of being carefully fashioned yet completely without culture in the sense of being “grounded” in any recognisable tradition, Austro-German or otherwise’. It does make a difference in Lucerne to have a raft of seasoned players joining the core contingent from the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. The visual dimension is stronger, too, with the option to switch to the so-called ‘Conductor Camera’ and experience Abbado from a player’s perspective. If this strikes some readers as a gimmick I can only say that I welcome it as a natural use of the new medium.

Listen without the images, though, and it quickly becomes apparent that Abbado’s previous, audio-only account (DG, 12/93, and subsequently revamped for SACD) is sonically superior, with greater hall ambience and less tendency for wind, brass and percussion to lose themselves in the mix. It’s not as if the conductor’s conception has changed a great deal. His Fifth has always displayed a tad less inner intensity than some of the great readings of the past but with compensating elegance and grace. Once again the famous Adagietto steals in with a magic inevitability that few have matched. Sir Simon Rattle doesn’t try to, even if his choppier, consciously interventionist approach is more sheerly exciting elsewhere. EMI offers a bonus, too, in the shape of Thomas Adès’s Asyla.

Those with limited budgets might do well to wait until the autumn when Leonard Bernstein’s Unitel Mahler cycle gets its first worldwide DVD release. That said, Abbado’s music-making is as fine as you will find anywhere today and his admirers should be well satisfied.