Search - Anton Bruckner, Daniel Barenboim, Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra :: Bruckner: Symphony No. 5

Honesty and conviction!

Hiram Gomez Pardo | Valencia, Venezuela | 05/22/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"As we know, Bruckner is a high caliber composer and cosmic vision. And somehow every one of his Symphonies constitutes by itself a specific universe with its own language and spiritual grandness.



Nevertheless in the musical landscape, there has been a restrained interest to play Bruckner, specially in North America where you may easily count the great Brucknerians conductors with the fingers of one just hand, but fortunately this somber reality totally different in Europe.



Daniel Barenboim remains still as one the most expressive conductors in this field. His spiritual affinities with Bruckner are more than obvious. And he has achieved a special status between the most prominent directors of his generation at the moment to play with the necessary intensity and expression Bruckner works.



Nowadays there has been a major number of Mahler' s works performed in most of Hall concerts, and that' s is a very curious symptom. On one hand, it would seem we are closer to Mahler than Bruckner. And this fact has been practically a constant since the Fifties (when the champions directors as Horenstein, Adler, alter, Bernstein and Giulini established a fiery compromise in this sense). Anton Bruckner has been relegated to a very reduced minority and considering the status of the spiritual values in our modern world is more than understandable.



Barenboim has maintained (against all the odds) his firm resolution to conduct Bruckner and that fact must be recognized and even admired.



This is one of the greatest, honest and eloquent Bruckner's Fifths you can get in the market. So please, go on and get it.





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Wow!

King Lemuel | Puyallup, WA | 11/26/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Today I listened to Barenboim/BPO Bruckner symphonies 2, 4, 5.



I have the Barenboim/CSO mid 70s to early 80s Bruckner Cycle (part ADD, Part DDD)LP boxed set and love it! I was curious to hear Barenboim/BPO to see how they compare and stack up to Barenboim/CSO. As good as the recorded sound was on the CSO set, these recordings top them. The brass section for the BPO is doing a great imitation of the Out Of This World CSO brass section. With Bruckner, if the brass is second rate, the overall performance will greatly suffer.



The fifth has been my least favorite of the Bruckner symphonies. Maybe it is the performance, not the music! Many of the recordings I have heard have felt like an hour and 15 minutes on the road to nowhere. This performance was awe inspiring and a great hoot to listen to and I would rank it along side Sinopoli's grand 5th. I especially liked the 3rd movement scherzo. The 4th movement seemed to pull the entire symphony together with great power and majesty."