review from Gramophone (12.1987):
"Nielsen's Fifth Symphony can be made to sound an embarrassingly naïve battle-piece. But conductors who seek to counter this danger by concentrating on structural continuity and guarding against apparent excesses in the score risk missing the point; as do balance engineers who seek to have the percussion integrated in a conventional late-romantic way. The point is that unless the negative forces, embodied in the notorious side-drum but also at times in the rest of the percussion section and in the woodwind, really throw down the gauntlet, much of the music's storm and stress is psychologically redundant.
Myung-Whun Chung sets a perfect opening tempo; a slightly muffed bassoon scale is a minor distraction, certainly less important than the growing sense of disquiet so acutely registered in the cellos' accents; the violins contend mightily with the first percussion intrusion; we seem on course for an outstanding interpretation. But, as so often, the side-drum fails to generate the kind of terror later in the movement which alone gives meaning to the cathartic climax, and whilst the woodwind sound is beautifully velvety, it lacks venom when this is most needed. Robert Simpson has observed that "a clarinet and then a flute personify all that is savagely and destructively egotistical"; the clarinet gets close, but on the whole Simpson is describing an experience of the kind not communicated in this performance. It should be stressed that Chung's account is a good deal finer than most on record, and in recording quality it has no equal (some boominess in the bass, but otherwise a superb sound-picture). I hope it is clear from my review of his Sinfonia espansiva (BIS LP32 I; (D CD32 1,8/86) that I rate his gifts as a Nielsen interpreter very highly, and there is much in the second movement, especially the string playing, that is very fine indeed. I would query only a premature accelerando around fig. 66—it undercuts the following F minor scherzo section, which itself sounds rather too controlled and less than presto— and a smaller moment of impatience which mars the return of the final allegro. In the first movement I would also quibble with the correction of the first bassoon part between figs. 17 and 18—surely it is the third horn which is mis-printed (how urgently we need revised editions of Nielsen's orchestral works).
A performance which does full justice to this symphony is a rare thing, and Chung's, I fear, does not quite make it. Ole Schmidt with the LSO in his complete set (Unicorn-Kanchana CD UKCD2000/02, 7/87) achieves rather more dramatic tension, though this is not a patch on the live performance he gave shortly afterwards with the BBC Philharmonic. To my mind, Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic on their LP, though controversial, showed what is really at stake in the music (CBS—nla). Their recording, more than any other, suggests why Deryck Cooke reckoned this possibly the finest twentieth-century symphony of all (and he was well acquainted with some of the competition).
The violin had a very special place in Nielsen's life. It was his father's instrument, and he himself made a living on it for several years. The Violin Concerto, incidentally, the last music he heard on his deathbed, is in terms of its lyricism and bravura an exceptionally romantic piece for Nielsen. In the slow introductions which preface the two movements, the violin soars and dreams, evoking perhaps the songs of faraway things he remembered his mother singing. Dong-Suk Kang responds to the poetry of these moments, and Chung's characterization of the allegro cavalieresco is spot-on. Kang is well in command of the cadenzas (whose technical demands have embarrassed distinguished violinists in the past) and in general he plays with clarity and style. If he ultimately does not rival Tibor Varga (the finest recorded performance, last heard of on a DG Heliodor LP—nla), this is because he is too eager to squeeze out the expressive juice in the second movement introduction and in parts of the first movement, where the passagework should be descanting as freely as a bird over the melodic line of the orchestra. In addition, Varga brings exceptional wit and fantasy to the second movement.
Kang is greatly preferable to Telmányi (Danacord—LP only) in the Concerto, and the symphony is certainly not a negligible performance. But to discover why some of us are so passionately attached to these works, I think you have to ransack the secondhand shelves."
D.J.F.
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