Bruckner: Symphony No. 5 in B flat major

Conductor Simone Young and the Hamburg Philharmonic’s concluding volume in their grand survey of the complete symphonies of Anton Bruckner in their respective original versions (an all-important point to raise when engaging the works of this master symphonist) presents a live recording of the Symphony No. 5 (1875), a sprawling work that forms something like an axis of his complete oeuvre and also make greater demands on interpreters in its assimilation and realization than is the case in the symphonies immediately preceding and succeeding it. Ms. Young is presently concluding her successful decade-long tenure as Artistic Director of the Hamburg Philharmonic. Among her triumphs one can cite include her own Ring cycle that she conducted with great success at the Hamburg State Opera, in addition to her lauded and now completed Bruckner cycle, a Brahms symphony cycle and other distinguished work available on the Oehms Classics label.