Apart from the Classical, the Fifth is the most frequently performed and recorded of Prokofiev's seven symphonies. Its attractions are more immediate than those of the darker E flat minor Sixth even though it was the wartime symphony while its successor came in the first years of peace. Its first performance outside Russia took place in Boston in 1945 under the baton of Prokofiev's lifelong advocate, Koussevitzky, who had commissioned its predecessor, and his recording (RCA mono VL12021, 7/71—nla) must surely have high priority for transfer to CD.
With the present issue Neeme Jarvi and the Scottish National Orchestra complete their impressive cycle and readers who have invested in earlier releases will need no reminder of its excellence. Jarvi's credentials in this repertoire are well established by now and his direction is unhurried, fluent and authoritative. Tempos are all well judged and his feeling for this music unfailingly natural. the Chandos recording strikes me as being set just a shade further back than some of its companions in the series, certainly more so than the Seventh Symphony (ABRD1154, 4/86 CD CHAN8442, 7/86), making a little more of the hall ambience. Yet at the same time every detail is clear and there is more top than in the rival Karajan/DG and Slatkin/RCA versions listed above.
Unlike its competitors, Chandos give us a fill-up: three of the dances from the Waltz Suite, Op. 110. Jarvi included three of them on his disc of the Sixth Symphony (ABRD1122, 5/86; CD CHAN8359, 7/85). Here we have No. 1, ''Since we met'' from the fourth scene of War and Peace (though it was originally intended for the incidental music to Eugene Onegin), No. 3, the ''Mephisto Waltz'' from his music to the film Lermentov, and finally No. 4, ''End of the fairy-tale'' from Cinderella. A pedantic point but one that might puzzle those who are collecting the series: the note on the CD of the Sixth Symphony gives ''In the palace'' from Cinderella as being No. 1 but in fact it is No. 2. They are all elegantly played, even if there is a moment of strain in the last from the violins above the stave.
As for rival CD versions, IM spoke of ''the excellent, responsive playing'' that Leonard Slatkin secured from the St Louis orchestra on RCA, though he ultimately thought Bernstein's CBS the more powerful reading. I certainly like the expansive, unhurried quality of Slatkin's record but have to say that I, too, warm to Bernstein's greater dramatic intensity. His is the more charismatic, higherice DG label is in a class of its own in every way, and remains a first recommendation on vinyl.'