Edward Gardner’s series of Nielsen symphonies with the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra continues with this recording of the Symphony No. 5 complemented by the overture Helios and the Clarinet Concerto, featuring Alessandro Carbonare as soloist. Composed in 1903 on a trip to Greece, Helios depicts sunrise, noontime, and sunset over the Aegean Sea. The Clarinet Concerto dates from 1928 and is dedicated to Nielsen’s friend Aage Oxenvad, who gave the first performance. Composed between 1920 and 1922, the Fifth Symphony is unusually laid out in just two movements – the only piece by Nielsen to adopt this structure. Unlike his other mature symphonies, the fifth lacks a subtitle, but Nielsen described it as “the division of dark and light, the battle between evil and good” and the opposition between “Dreams and Deeds.” Though often characterized as a “war symphony,” Nielsen insisted that he had not been thinking of World War I while he was composing the work, despite his admission that “not one of us is the same as we were before the war.”