There are currently a dozen recordings of Bruckner's epic Fifth Symphony in The Classical Catalogue, variously derived from live and studio performances and variously available on one or two CDs. There are also versions immured within complete sets, of which the glorious 1958 DG account by Jochum and the BRSO (2/90) is a prime candidate for parole. (Jochum's 1964, live, single-disc Philips version with the Concertgebouw Orchestra, listed above, is not a match for the earlier one, either musically or technically.) The three newest arrivals—a 1989 re-make from Wand, a previously unissued live Karajan performance from his days with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra in the 1950s, and the reissue of Klemperer's 1967 New Philharmonia recording—are all on single CDs. At 80 minutes playing time, it must have been a close call for two of them.
Wand's newest recording was made during concerts in Hamburg in October 1989. In soundquality it rather resembles Karajan's later Berlin studio version, coupled now with the First Symphony in a two-CD DG set. The engineers of North German Radio provide ripe, full-bodied sound with just about enough space around it to allow the great monolithic fanfares suitably to resonate. At the outset it sounds truer than the DG; the bass line doesn't boom as it does, briefly, on the Karajan. But there are places where the DG version seems to have greater space and presence, moments when the Berliners incinerate their tone and play like gods. Wand's earlier recording, now part of a ten-CD set from RCA ((CD) GD60075, 2/90), gave a not dissimilar reading of the symphony in rather glaring sound. In this respect, the newer version is more approachable. It is also arguable that the North German RSO playing is superior to that of the Cologne RSO on the earlier disc.
Whether or not one goes along with the single-CD men tends to depend on the symphony's slow movement where the greatest variations of pace and approach occur. Bruckner's marking Sehr langsam has been ignored by a lot of conductors who take the alla breve marking and the tricky 3/4 against 6/4 metre as cues for a jaunt. Wand isn't quite in this category, but he is fairly brisk: brisker now than he was on the Cologne recording. Bits of this work well enough but the beautiful, and thematically crucial, chain of falling sevenths at bar 23 ff (from 1'35'') is made to sound almost trivial and when the C major subject arrives shortly afterwards the music seems to stop and start all over again. In his Berlin studio recording, Karajan gives the opening oboe theme much more the feel of an old German chorale. His tempo for that is crotchet=42 to Wand's crotchet=56. The songful F major subject flows beautifully out of this and there is absolutely no sense of rush when we reach the falling sevenths. Karajan inflates the sonority of the C major subject, which is a pity; but at least his reading is measured and of a piece with a genuinely broadly-based slow movement running to just over 20 minutes—five minutes longer than Wand or Klemperer or Haitink on his two-CD Philips set. Klemperer is a particular disappointment in this movement. The opening is superb, with a fine keening oboe and a tempo, nicely judged, somewhere between Wand's and Karajan's. But for reasons best known to himself Klemperer suddenly speeds up at the falling sevenths passage. It is also clear that insufficient time was spent coordinating the ensemble in the 3/4 and 6/4 wind and string counterpoints.
Like many of the New Philharmonia/Klemperer/EMI recordings, this one sounds tremendously gaunt and imposing, the spaces of London's Kingsway Hall creatively used by the engineers. But the performance itself shows signs of ossification. It is not quite as lumbering as his notorious account of Mahler's Seventh Symphony (EMI—nla) made about this time, but the first and last movements have a stop-go feel about them (more often stop than go) despite what one senses to be a grand architectural vision that exists somewhere in the recesses of the conductor's mind. The finale must be a brute to conduct, of course. ''Colossal and intricate elaboration'' (Robert Simpson's phrase) is a politer formulation, but it needs guile and a measure of urgency to help bring it off. Traditionally, conductors have taken the opening fugal subject steadily, relaxed for the second subject group, then stormed ahead at the F minor tutti (fig. F, bar 137). Wand does this, and it is not entirely satisfactory. But at least he is not as extreme as Klemperer, who begins the fugue at a snail's pace, accelerates, drops back and then accelerates again, this time to quite a fast tempo, at fig. F. I find it quite bizarre. The symphony's coda is beautifully paced by Klemperer; but by then it is too late.
Haitink's VPO performance is less emphatic than most but, like his earlier Concertgebouw recording (nla), it is well integrated. As is Karajan's, the most guileful of all in its integration of an interplay of tempos that are nicely contrasted but never extreme. His account of the finale has weight, momentum, a sense of space, and a sense of drama—more so, in the final resort, than Wand's new account. Compare the two performances in the symphony's final pages and there is no doubt that the Berlin performance is the more electrifying experience. Buying the Karajan also involves acquiring the First Symphony—no great privation since the performance is very fine and the text, very properly, is that of Linz 1866 and not Vienna 1891—but if you already have the 1866 edition of First Symphony, you may want a single-CD Fifth. In which case, Wand's new version is certainly the one to go for.
In his live 1954 Vienna recording of the Fifth, Karajan is much less successful. By that date his conducting of the Eighth Symphony was already something of a legend, but how often, one wonders, had he conducted the Fifth? The performance seems to be guided by a pre-thought ground-plan that doesn't entirely work and by a certain extra-curricular desire to impress. This is the least 'collected' Bruckner performance I have heard from this conductor. The orchestra is unpredictable, and so are the recorded balances. As we approach the symphony's peroration the horns poop away with some noisy interjections that the score marks pianissimo. Then, in the peroration itself, the selfsame horn section more or less retires from view. Incidentally, Orfeo's booklet is incorrect when it says that Karajan made no commercial recordings with the VSO. He used them in November 1962 when he recorded Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto for DG with Sviatoslav Richter (8/87).'