Gunther Herbig will never be a great Mahler conductor, but he brings to the Fifth an elegant and unaffected quality. The problem is that Mahler’s music has always been so much more than the sum of its note values. As with Yoel Levi, so with Herbig, we look in vain for some recognition that here is a new world of feeling demanding a special response from its custodians. More sensitive and flexible than Levi, Herbig is still entirely unremarkable, sprightly in the face of even the most apocalyptic climax. The opening movement is far too relaxed in feeling; there is some accomplished horn playing in the Scherzo, but the Adagietto is sentimental rather than profound.
And so to the inescapable question: does a record of the BBC Philharmonic in fine fettle in March 1984 constitute a good enough reason to release yet another version of Mahler’s Fifth? The answer, as so often in this series, must be no. Herbig’s teachers included Hermann Scherchen and Herbert von Karajan, the latter at the beginning of his Mahlerian odyssey when he himself recorded the work for DG. Today, that version makes a convincing candidate for bargain basement immortality while Barbirolli’s 1969 reading remains available at mid price.'