Bruckner’s Fifth Symphony is a bit like Mahler’s Seventh: a problem child. It’s idiosyncratic, emotionally ambivalent, architectural rather than melodically forthcoming and equal to his Eighth in duration and grandeur. It features pizzicati and counterpoint in a way no other Bruckner Symphony does. Few conductors ever get it completely “right”. Simone Young, a noted Bruckner interpreter, and the Sydney Symphony came as close as any Brucknerite can reasonably expect in performances last week which saw excellent contributions from every section of the orchestra, something we now virtually take for granted, such is the SSO’s polish. The work was last preformed here in 1977 in a typically brisk and rather matter of fact rendition by Willem van Otterloo. This one was vastly superior. Young guided the orchestra through the minefield of the first movement with its slow introduction, (unique in Bruckner) which reappears at the beginning of the final movement, giving the work a cyclic structure. The tutti exclamations and self-conscious grandiloquence which follow the opening sound almost like a self-parody, but Young handled the launch into the Allegro and continued throughout with convincingly integrated tempos without jarring gear changes and carefully nuanced climaxes.

In the solemn and despondent Adagio the...