Search - Eugen Jochum :: Bruckner: Symphony No. 5

Eugen Jochum's 1938 Bruckner Fifth, reissued here for the first time since the early LP era, documents the first of the conductor¹s five published recordings of a symphony particularly close to his heart. The engineering is unusually refulgent and well-balanced for its vintage, conveying a more cogent and proportioned orchestral image than the close-up immediacy distinguishing Karl Böhm's pioneering Bruckner Fifth with the Dresden Staatskapelle from two years earlier. The Hamburg State Philharmonic may have been considered a second-string orchestra in relation to their first-tier Dresden colleagues in the late 1930s, but Jochum consistently secures richer, more expressive string playing and better-blended brass (especially in the Finale's chorale) from his Hamburg forces. More significant, Jochum's spacious conception and his penchant for organlike instrumental blends are similar to his later readings. His carefully plotted tempo changes cover a slightly wider parameter here, although the conductor eschews doubling the wind parts as he did in his later commercial recordings (but not in his valedictory 1986 Concertgebouw broadcast on Tahra). Finicky historic-CD collectors may carp at the high degree of surface noise and inelegant side joins at times, yet Music and Arts' transfer is thankfully true to the timbre of the original 78s. Mark Kluge's superb annotations offer well-researched and lucid perspectives on the performance in hand. While Jochum's radiant 1980 Dresden EMI Bruckner Fifth benefits from ravishing stereo sound and the Dresden Staatskapelle at their full-throated apex, specialist collectors interested in Jochum, Bruckner, or both will find much to admire in the conductor's 1938 Fifth. --Jed Distler