During the composer’s lifetime, Bruckner’s symphonies were often performed in bowdlerised editions produced by his professional colleagues. Although these editors acted with the honourable motive of rendering Bruckner’s music more accessible to the public, the eventual publication from 1934 onwards of the composer’s original scores illustrated how naive Bruckner’s friends had been in believing their own versions to be superior: in the case of Franz Schalk’s edition of the Fifth Symphony, which dates from 1893 (not 1894 as claimed by Telarc), the work is truncated brutally, and what remains is not only entirely reorchestrated, but even drastically recomposed in many details. It was in this mutilated state, a travesty of what Bruckner actually wrote, that the symphony received its first performance in 1894, eighteen years after its composition, and it is this version which is recorded here.

Schalk’s version is already available on CD in an early stereo recording of 1956 by the Vienna Philharmonic under Hans Knappertsbusch (Decca 448 581-2). By that time, the Schalk edition had long been discredited, but Knappertsbusch’s laziness was legendary, so when authentic editions of Bruckner’s scores began to appear in print, he did not have the patience to spend time studying them, preferring to continue conducting the versions which he knew already. Leon Botstein’s decision to resuscitate Schalk’s score in the 1990s could be regarded as enterprising if his intention was merely to give audiences a fascinating insight into the form in which Bruckner’s music first became known, but both he and the other two authors who contribute to Telarc’s long booklet notes make it clear that they take the Schalk version seriously as a viable artistic achievement in itself. Interesting though these booklet notes are, the advocacy made on behalf of the bowdlerised scores is ludicrous: for example, it is claimed in the final paragraph that Bruckner himself approved a rewritten version of his Fourth Symphony, yet the authors neglect to mention that although Bruckner tolerated the publication of this score in 1890, he did so with reluctance, expressing his disapproval not only by refusing to sign the copy of the manuscript sent to the printer, but also by making in the same year a new handwritten copy of his own authentic score. The 1890 edition of the Fourth Symphony was mainly the work of Franz Schalk, and since Bruckner objected to this edition, it is inconceivable that he would have authorised Schalk’s farcical edition of the Fifth Symphony, a monstrosity which misrepresents the composer’s intentions to a far greater extent than did the 1890 version of the Fourth.

Three examples will serve to illustrate the extent of the artistic vandalism of the Schalk edition: at 11’39" in the finale, Schalk adds his own modulation, enabling him to jump forward 31 bars to a passage in a different tonality; at 12’14" in the same movement, a staggering 126 bars are omitted; and the da capo repeat of the scherzo omits the first 244 bars: when the reprise begins with bars 245-310, initially one does not notice that a cut has been made, because in Bruckner’s original score bars 245-310 are closely modelled on bars 1-66, but when one hears bar 311, one is expecting to hear bar 67, and because they are not the same one is then (belatedly) aware of the massive cut.

Obviously neither the Knappertsbusch nor the Botstein recordings can be recommended to anyone as an introduction to this symphony: these releases are suitable only for specialist listeners who already know the work well, and who are interested in hearing the Schalk edition as a historical curiosity. Botstein takes longer over the slow movement than does Knappertsbusch, but he is faster in the other movements: overall, Botstein’s performance is the more exhilarating of the two, but it is meaningless to attempt to evaluate the quality of his interpretation in any more detailed way, as no performance, no matter how much careful thought has gone into it, can make such an edition of the score sound structurally convincing. In the circumstances, his sudden dash to the finishing line in the last nineteen bars of the first movement is not likely to offend anyone, whilst the woodwind’s inability to keep in rhythm at the start of the second movement (particularly noticeable at 0’30" and 0’58") is a problem which has often dogged performances of this symphony, including the Knappertsbusch Decca recording and both Klemperer’s EMI studio recording (1967) and his live version on the Music and Arts label (1968). Elsewhere, the London Philharmonic’s playing on this Telarc CD is good and the engineers provide vivid sound.

Reviewer

Raymond Clarke

Performance

Recording