Symphonie Nr. 5 in c-Moll op. 67 – 5. Teil

Originally commissioned by Count Franz Oppersdorff, Symphony No. 5, apocryphally entitled the “Symphony of Fate,” was completed in the spring of 1808. Beethoven dedicated it to his long-time patrons Prince Franz Joseph Maximilian Lobkowitz and Count Andriy Razumovsky; several of his string quartets were first performed in Razumovsky’s palace.

In this extract we hear the third movement of a rare recording featuring the Austrian conductor Franz Schalk (1863–1931). Schalk had had a number of positions as an opera director outside Austria before Gustav Mahler appointed him as the first Kapellmeister of the Vienna Court Opera in 1900; he went on to serve as director of the opera between 1918 and 1929. Schalk had a particular passion for the works of Anton Bruckner. This recording of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony also reveals the pitfalls associated with early recordings and the limits of what was still a relatively new medium. In this version of the second movement, which is derived from the prominent “fate theme” of the first, the horns are dampened down almost to the point of being restrained, and are almost completely obscured by the striking, chant-like meter of the strings.
(Constanze Köhn)