Per Nørgård, one of Denmark's leading composers, received a commission to produce this work for the 125th anniversary of the births of two of the best-known Nordic composers, Finland's Jean Sibelius and Denmark's own Carl Nielsen. The resulting piece was premiered by the Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra in a concert featuring the fifth symphonies of all three composers.

Commentators on Nørgård's output regard this symphony as the beginning of a period of stylistic change. It both synthesizes and comments on earlier work and finds new, more turbulent and energetic sounds. In this work a key element of contrast seems to involve the scale of the musical gestures. There is a powerful surging arpeggiated figure that spans the range of the whole orchestra, contrasting with tiny micro-intervals, motives whose notes are closer together than any two adjacent keys on the piano.

There is no programmatic content and no subtitle to the work. The work seems to be made from blocks of sound, and does not readily fall into standard symphonic sections. It is played continuously; the composer, enigmatically, has said that its structure is open to interpretation by the listener. For purposes of the symphony's first recording, Nørgård suggested placing division points at the end of beginning of sections marked allegro feroce, presenting the following "movements": Allegro; Allegro feroce; Andante; Allegro feroce.

This lack of definite structure was, frankly, puzzling to this hearer. An admirer of prior symphonies by this composer, he found the almost entirely atonal and darkly colored 38-minute work to lack meaningful structure, which is to say that there seemed to be no reason for it to go anywhere. There are important moments marked by the pealing of the orchestra's tubular bells, but what the whole thing means remains vague.

Frequently there were intriguing sounds, such as the surging figure mentioned above, and some of the uses of micro-intervals created strange new species of chords. Jørgen Jensen, writing about the symphony for a recording's liner notes, says that the first movement is a sort of "commentary on the first movement of [Nørgård's] Third Symphony," and that the conclusion of the Fifth Symphony returns to the conclusion of the First Symphony, Sinfonia austere, embedding its music in the finale's eruption of a large number of active musical lines.

© Joseph Stevenson, All Music Guide