Bruckner's pupil Franz Schalk performed the work very successfully in Graz in April 1894, though he made sweeping changes to it. Fortunately perhaps, Bruckner himself was unable to attend the performance, for he was already seriously ill and not permitted to travel. He would certainly not have been happy about the changes. What is more, the ailing composer was already very involved with his Ninth Symphony, which he desperately wanted to complete before he died. In spite of the changes Schalk had undertaken so as not to overtax the audience, everyone sensed that the Fifth represented a climax in Bruckner's symphonic oeuvre. After the premiere, Schalk enthusiastically wrote informing his teacher that the evening would count among the most glorious memories of his life. The rare thematic unity of this special work deserves to be seen as marking out one of the most important symphonies in the history of music. Bruckner himself is supposed to have referred to it as his ‘Fantastic’. Among the many other names that have been given to the Fifth are ‘Medieval’ because of its sometimes Baroque contrapuntal intricacies, ‘Catholic’ because of its solemn splendour and affinity with his church compositions, and ‘Chorale’ because of the frequently interjected chorale themes and final movement. All the epithets make sense but are nonetheless inappropriate because they apply only to parts of this gigantically dimensioned work.
