The result is a delightfully fresh performance with the constant sense of a story unfolding, shot through with that essential element
I realise that this may all sound a bit fanciful, but listen to the recording and you will hear what I mean. Most of all, in the hushed Adagietto, Vänskä eschews any sense of the mourning sometimes associated with this music in order to give us the tenderest of love scenes. The first of these is packed with comic machinations – dwarves can’t be far off! – with a lightly balletic turn in the waltz episode for the strings.
Even stronger is the sense of sheer playfulness in the Scherzo and the Finale. The energetic bite of the Second Movement conjures up a theatrical stage villain. There is a real sense of setting up a story in the varied and episodic First Movement. To my ears Vänskä treats this work as though it were the accompaniment to a fairy tale. His tempi tend not to linger: he pushes forward in the style of a compelling storyteller. He does not search out the psychological angst and deep melancholy that Bernstein and Tennstedt found in the early movements: rather than looking forward to the tragic Sixth and Ninth Symphonies, as they did, Vänskä relates the Fifth back to its pastoral predecessors, Nos 3 and 4. This is not a work that has languished in the doldrums recording-wise, but Vänskä has an individual take on it. The recording quality is absolutely first-rate too: clear, realistic and clean. Vänskä and the Minnesota Orchestra’s Mahler has all the hallmarks of their much-praised Sibelius series: excellent orchestral balance, polished playing from the soloists, and a feel for creating atmosphere.