Search - Anton Bruckner, Matacic, Orch National De France :: Bruckner: Symphonie No. 5

Not Your Ordinary Bruckner Fifth

J Scott Morrison | Middlebury VT, USA | 04/19/2005

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Lovro von Matacic, a Croatian conductor who had made an earlier recording of the Bruckner Fifth with the Czech Philharmonic, is heard here conducting the Orchestre National de France in a live radio broadcast in 1979. This issue is taken from the vaults of Radio France and published by Andante/Naïve. It has been released before by rather more obscure labels. Andante/Naïve has been releasing a number of these Radio France broadcasts and interesting as they are, not very many of them have caught my fancy. This one is a so-so rendition of the symphony that tends to emphasize the brass in the 'big' moments but lighten the textures in other places where one is used to heavier weight. The string choir seems rather thin. You will either like this or not, depending on your own taste in Bruckner performances. One has the sense that the orchestra is not settled into the piece, perhaps because (one assumes) they do not have much of a performance tradition with Bruckner. Further, I am almost certain that this performance is of Matacic's own edition of the symphony. That is what he recorded with the Czech Philharmonic a few years earlier. This is not terribly important as there are few changes from the more usual Haas or Nowak editions. Matacic has smoothed out some of the transitions in this somewhat ungainly work. Probably the most obvious deviation from usual Bruckner interpretation is in the third movement, which comes across as more light-hearted than usual.



This is probably not a good choice for a first recording of the Fifth. But those who have several of the standard recordings (e.g., Karajan, Sinopoli, among others) it might be interesting to have. [I wish someone could explain why the cover of the CD's booklet has a picture of a horse and rider racing a locomotive belching smoke.]



Scott Morrison"