How splendid that Sweden, always a good friend to Nielsen's music, is currently engaged on two cycles of the symphonies! Having already given us two records in his projected Nielsen cycle (Nos. 1 and 4), Esa-Pekka Salonen turns to the Fifth, which has been hailed as his greatest symphony: indeed, the late lamented Deryck Cooke went so far as to call it ''the greatest symphony of the present century''. There are many good things to report about this newcomer even if it ultimately does not offer a serious challenge to Myung-Whun Chung (BIS) or Ole Schmidt (Unicorn-Kanchana—as part of his complete set now at mid price or on a single LP). Esa-Pekka Salonen secures well-disciplined playing from the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and the recording, made like its predecessors in the Berwald Hall, strikes me as fresher and more successful.
I can't say I really care for his rather brisk tempo at the very opening, a good deal faster than the crotchet = 100 which was good enough for Thomas Jensen (Decca—nla) and is marked in the score. (To be fair, Myung-Whun Chung is also fast but generally speaking he has a stronger grasp of the idiom and more sense of atmosphere.) On the other hand, in the Adagio ma non troppo passage (nine bars before fig. 26, and indexed as 2 on the CD) he finds the tempo giusto and produces playing of sustained eloquence. Further on (fig. 31), one feels that surface beauty, the well-groomed sonority that distinguishes the playing throughout, matters too much to him. Yet, the desolate closing pages of the movement are magnificent—and the clarinet solo is superb. The second movement starts out splendidly and the orchestral playing has impressive unanimity and tonal finesse. Salonen is more measured than Myung-Whun Chung in the passage beginning at fig. 64; as I said (''Quarterly Retrospect'', February, page 1166), Thomas Jensen got this absolutely right so that the repeated quavers at 67 have a disembodied, otherworldly quality. So they do here in Salonen's hands, and there is much in this movement that is convincing. The Presto at fig. 71 is also well judged and the phrasing nicely shaped and my only quarrels are with the disruptive (and sentimental) slowing down in the bar before fig. 93 and again at 94, where only a diminuendo is marked. The whole of this section, the Andante un poco tranquillo at fig. 92 (indexed as 5 on the CD) is, I'm afraid, not completely free from narcissism and (to put it temperately) the closing bars are not exactly free from bombast: the allargando is overdone to the point of vulgarity!
Whereas Myung-Whun Chung and the Gothenberg orchestra offer a valuable coupling, in the form of the Violin Concerto with Dong-Suk Kang as the impressive soloist, and Ole Schmidt on Unicorn (LP) gives a penetrating account of the Sixth Symphony, CBS offer three movements from Maskarade; the Overture, the Prelude to Act 2 and the ''Dance of the Cocks''. They are all very well played and recorded, the latter is perhaps a shade self-conscious and well-groomed but enjoyable none the less. Were Unicorn to issue Ole Schmidt's account of the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies separately on CD, (they are at present only part of a three-disc set), this would be a winner. As it is, Myung-Whun Chung's performance, though not ideal, is to be preferred on CD and on LP I would prefer the EMI/Kubelik.'