David Hurwitz of Classic Digest Review has a thing about the climax to the first movement to Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony: according to him, most performances simply don’t get the alternating tam tam and cymbals clashes right (he calls the tam tam the king of instruments and also expatiates that the top-of-the-range tam tams hail from Wuhan!) In this recording, they sound just fine.

Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra

The “glorifying the human spirit… praising the free and happy man – his strength, his generosity, and the purity of his soul” in this “war’’ symphony and its disparate mixture of emotions convey a permanent challenge to conductors and orchestras, as the work is much more an emotional kaleidoscope: from the nobility of the first movement and Adagio to the slightly tongue-in-cheek louchness of the Scherzo and...