After the death of Mahler in 1911 the great Austro-German symphonic line was carried on mainly in England, America, Scandinavia and Russia. The Fifth Symphony of Carl Nielsen, a Danish composer, was composed in 1921. David Fanning discusses its place within the symphonic tradition since Beethoven, revealing the personal background to the work and taking account of the extensive Danish commentaries, including the composer's own. In an analysis of the music he lays bare the origins of its images of inertia, anxiety and collapse in Nielsen's tone poems and incidental music for the theatre. Insights are offered into the symphony's progressive tonality and its relationship to traditional structural models.

(Score). Symphony No.5 Op.50 was composed by Carl Nielsen in 1922. Carl Nielsen (1865-1931) was a Danish musician, often seen as his country s greatest composer. While his operas and songs have become embedded in the cultural heritage of his native Denmark, internationally he is better known for his symphonies and concertos distinguished by his prominent use of Brass instruments and dramatic changes in tonality. His Symphony No.5 (Op. 50, FS. 97) was composed in 1922, and is often seen as his "War Symphony", despite the composer denying any such direct influence. Strangely, it is formed of only two movements, and does not have any title. Often said to be a modernist piece, it is constantly restless, some would say pulsating. Brought to fame by Leonard Bernstein in 1962, scholars and musicians arestill trying to understand this enigmatic work.

Sibelius's Fifth is one of the great late-Romantic symphonies. In this searching account, based on a wealth of new information, James Hepokoski takes a fresh look at the work and its composer. His findings have implications beyond Sibelius himself into the entire repertory of Post-Wagnerian symphonic composition. The early chapters place the Fifth Symphony squarely within the general culture of European musical 'modernism' and focus in particular on the problem of the clash of that culture with the more radical 'New-Music' experiments of an emerging younger generation of composers. Subsequent chapters include a probing consideration of Sibelius's style and meditative aesthetic; an account of how the symphony was composed; and a descriptive analysis of the final, familiar version. The book concludes with a discussion of the composer's own prescribed tempos for the Fifth Symphony, along with a comparison of several different recordings.