Frankly, I am not fond of Muti's Fifth, though his ear-blasting recording of Ivan the Terrible is more than enough to demonstrate his affinity with Prokofiev. The opening Andante is plagued by the same problems that characterized the first movement of Muti's recording of Prokofiev's Third Symphony. The phrasing of the thick development section is awfully vague. Just as in the Third, Muti's brass tended to coagulate into an amorphous mass (the opposite would be Ozawa's over-articulated Third), and here the developmental threads seem to have no purposiveness. They simply wander into one another, in the hopes that good harmonies will occur. While perhaps no one can match the sound Muti produces at the double-tremelo climax, with shattering gongs and brightened piano glissandi that are often drowned out elsewhere, Muti is here no match for James Levine's far more distinct Andante, where the instruments, particularly the trumpets, work together by paradoxically being distinguishable from one another, and where the thundering climax seems more like a goal than merely an eventuality.

At 8:50, Muti's Allegro Marcato is a bit lax. The double basses are somehow soft even while they try to be assertive, though the wood blocks click happily and the intermittent triumphs of the brass are quite forceful. Muti takes the "laughing" trumpets that introduce the return of the first allegro theme at a very slow tempo, presumably trying to accent the humor that Dorati on Mercury Living Presence misses (though Dorati's recording of the Fifth is the weakest ever). In the process, however, he reduces the urgency of the movement's forward thrust. At 12:36, the Adagio, like the Andante, is a tad more laid-back than usual, though an unusally angry snare drum attempts to push things along. However, Muti deserves kudos for drawing out the anguish of the Adagio's brassy central climax to a malevolent degree that most conductors avoid.

The Allegro Giocoso is, by contrast, surprisingly light, as if Muti were conducing on tip-toes. He imbues the movement with an airy, almost Mendelssohnian quality, perhaps to set up the jolt that occurs when in the motor-driven climax he suddenly cuts loose with a hell-bent, breast-beating furor that gives all competitors a run for their money. Yet the movement -- and indeed Muti's entire 5th -- does not have that pure, earthy, "Russian" quality so many Prokofievians demand. As in Ozawa's and Karajan's 5th, the strings are warmed-over, the winds are honeyed, and any hints of Russian folk themes are bulldozed by a borderline Western European Romanticism.

The Meeting of the Volga and the Don (1951) has generally not met with much approval from even Prokofiev's staunchest fanatics. At best it is written off as a concession to the state, and at worst it is seen as an old man's embarrassment -- how else could one possibly think about an occassional piece written to glorify the construction of a canal? On a simple level, however, it is surely possible to enjoy the piece as unpretentious, decent, and immediately pleasant music, in the manner of the Seventh Symphony. Although we have no CD recording to compare it to, the performance and recording here are wondrously fertile and alive, making us believe (where an inferior rendition indeed might not) that this piece is not so terrible after all. The heroic solo trumpet that announces the principal theme is superb, bright and unashamed. A celebratory melody on the strings enters, evoking the rocking waters of rivers soon to meet like long-lost friends. The central development section is surprisingly "symphonic" -- the lightly barking trumpets even seem to come right out of the 5th -- and climaxes in a sweeping theme with striding strings and wide-open horn calls. An almost too-lovely slow theme is then carried in by the strings, imagining calm, feminine currents; the celebratory strings then reenter and, undercut by a brief trombone solo, bring us to the climax.

But the climax will force a smile on your face. After the final build-up, the orchestra winds back down again, descending in obviously major chords to a cymbal-crashing resolution. But then the percussion restates that resolution. And it restates it again, self-mockingly. Then the full brass restates it. Then brass and strings restate it once more. Then the percussion reproduces this flourish four additional times (!), after which the full brass, in a burst of pomposity that makes the final chords of the Death of Tybalt from Romeo and Juliet look restrained, finally brings this costumed affair to a close. With no less than 8 false endings in less than 45 seconds, we might now think of the piece as a parody, and must also rethink everything we have just heard.

In his liner notes, Bernard Jacobson suggests that the "Meeting" has a "hint of poker-faced parody" in it. Certainly, the ridiculous ending more than merely hints at parody--it is parody itself. In retrospect, those sweetly flowing strings of the slow section, as augmented by tinkling triangles and chimes, seem just too sweet, too melodic, not only a parody of ceremonials but also a parody of the "Prokofievian" melodies that people came to expect. Given the obviously comical nature of this work's climax, it is not clear to me why champions of Prokofiev have not defended this piece as a parody in the manner that, for example, the "October Cantata" has been justified as a satire.

Perhaps the thinking is that by 1951 Prokofiev was too beaten-down to bother with subversion anymore. Nevertheless, this disc is currently the only chance you have to judge for yourself. Furthermore, because we are unlikely to hear another recording of the "Meeting" anytime soon (this disc is already 10 years old), we should certainly be thankful that in this CD the piece is presented in what seems like a "textbook" performance.

-- Andrew Grossman (09/09/00)

Muti's approach to the Fifth is intelligently conceived, deliberate in tempo. Compared to Von Karajan, Koussevtisky or Rozhdeventsky, Muti's slow movements (the first and third) may seem downright sluggish. However, the payoffs are enormous -- he explores the depths of the music's rich melodies, illuminating with great detail Prokofiev's commentary on the human soul. Even more remarkable, the artistry of the Philadelphia Orchestra players surpasses that of the more highly regarded European orchestras across the pond (e.g. Karajan's Berlin Philharmonic.) Muti shapes every melodic line with great care. Gone are the sharp, shrill brass of the Russian orchestras or the blurred string passages of lesser conductors. The strings are rich and full, perfect for so Romantic a symphony. Yet Muti full well understands this is not Mendelssohn, and unlike Karajan, who dulls Prokofiev's sharp irony with a classicist's brush, Muti accentuates the ironic when needed. Consider the finale to the first movement -- Muti propels the music forward to a gripping conclusion, his entire orchestra at full volume, sustained by a marvellous percussion section (compare with Karajan's hapless percussionists, particularly the snare drum, in his famous recording.)

Where Muti's insightful, purposeful approach to the first three movements succeeds brilliantly, he slips up in the fourth movement, the Allegro giocoso. Part of what makes Prokofiev's Fifth so successful and magnificent among all symphonies past and present is that unlike other Prokofiev symphonies, it has an inherent logic that builds to an unambiguous conclusion. Unlike the Second, for instance, which merely seems to fizzle out at the end, there is no doubt about the end of Prokofiev's Fifth Symphony. The Allegro giocoso builds inexorably to an emphatic, irrefutably dramatic conclusion that when performed right, sends the audience immediately to its feet. In fact, at the inaugural performance at the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory on 13-Jan-1945, the audience reportedly leapt to its feet in rapturous shouts and applause. In Rozhdestvensky's electrifying 1971 Proms performance with the Leningrad Philharmonic, the finale is so dramatic it seems the entire Albert Hall audience erupts into thunderous shouts and applause. The same would not happen at the end of Muti's otherwise brilliant Fifth. He waits too long to pick up the tempo. By the climax, he has left his orchestra at 3/4 power and listeners wanting for more.

The other work on this disc, The Meeting of the Volga Don is refreshingly enjoyable in spite of its reputation as listless, second-rate Prokofiev. Written in 1951, a time when Prokofiev was in deteriorating health and nearly destitute, it is a testament to his genius that he could still produce music so melodically appealing and purposeful, even when written to celebrate the building of a canal. It is far from a banal propaganda work as its detractors have claimed. Structured as a Festive Poem, its mood is indeed festive, painting a picture of smiling workers dutifully constructing a canal. However, Prokofiev was never one to merely churn out cheery propaganda tunes. You can expect that at some point he will inject irony, and he does not disappoint here. The main theme, carried first by solo trumpet and then picked up by the full orchestra, starts off patriotically enough, but soon enough is taking unexpected melodic and chromatic detours, sometimes threatening to send the construction project plunging into the river. At 8:50 Stalin's hand, announced by characteristic malevolent brass, makes an appearance, almost dragging the music (and construction) to a complete halt. But such overt mockery could not persist with Stalin still alive, so Prokofiev rescues the project with a lulling, heroic string melody started by the double basses, hued in the shimmering waters of the two rivers conveyed by twinkling xylophone and accentuated by festive flutes. The music slows to a crawl, only to be rescued by the recapitulation of solo trumpet's first theme. To make his point that we are not to take this work too seriously, Prokofiev builds the climactic crescendo to what we think will be an emphatic ending, but then pulls the rug out from under us with half-a-dozen false endings, eventually resolved by exasperated strings. This is an 18 minute tribute to a canal after all.

On the whole, this is an important recording -- confirming Muti among the great modern Prokofiev interpreters. His richly detailed account of the Fifth, excepting a slightly misjudged last movement, places it among the most important recordings of the Fifth and highly recommended. And the Festive Poem The Meeting of the Volga and the Don proves a most interesting portrait of one of Prokofiev's last works.

-- Sugi Sorensen (09/09/00)

I want to speak here solely of the Fifth Symphony. My view is perhaps somewhere between Messrs. Sorensen and Grossman. Unusual in this performance are: extreme clarity of the individual parts & sections, especially in the strings (this is the only one I've encountered where you can hear all the string parts) and percussion (toward the end of the 1st and 3rd movements -- absolutely marvelous); near-perfect dynamics (until half way through the adagio, where, inexplicably, everything goes out the window, and gets played one or more notches too loud); very conscientious tempos; and, not least, an exceptionally adept sense of the recording studio. I think Muti deserves credit for following Prokofiev's tricky dynamic in the last movement, and only gradually building up to a rousing conclusion.