No one recording of Shostakovich's most often-recorded symphony can be all things to all people, but this one has been, and can still be, an awful lot to more than most; mine is not the only voice that has sung its praises during its long absence from the catalogue.
Sometimes you can sense from the first phrase that greatness is in the air. Ancerl's shaping of the upbeat rhythms here is inspired (the violins deliberately snappier than the lower strings), and practically everything in the first three movements has that touch of imagination allied to total familiarity which makes you forget about players and instruments and simply experience musical thought. (Pace some recent trends in Shostakovich commentary I take 'musical thought' to embrace and transfigure life-experiences rather than to exclude them.) Apart from Ancerl's leadership this must also be put down to the uniquely characterful woodwind (especially the clarinet) of the Czech Philharmonic in the 1960s.
I say 'the first three movements' not because I feel the finale is a let-down, but because I would be less inclined to defend its many departures from the tempos suggested by the score. There is still a wealth of insight—the range of expression from the strings within a believable pianissimo is extraordinary, for instance. More recent recordings enable us to hear things which are barely detectable here. But the Supraphon engineers obtained an excellent balance and perspective none the less, and personally I would not choose any recording of Shostakovich's Fifth in preference to this one—not even Rozhdestvensky on Olympia (with the Ninth Symphony) or Mravinsky on Erato (uncoupled).
To have the First Cello Concerto as a fill-up is some bonus. Milos Sadlo may not have the colossal tonal variety and sheer stamina of Rostropovich (whose first recording with Ormandy on CBS/Sony Classical is surely the one to have), and the end of the cadenza is seriously under tempo. All the same, there is character a-plenty in the performance, and given that this is one of Shostakovich's perfect masterworks the recommendation is clear.'