I will say that the violin part in the first movement was a bit screechy (around 6:00 in thje appended video). Karajan and the BPO create shimmering textures and mystery, and everything is very controlled. Review: If you want your Sibelius less 'heroic/romantic,' this is the disc for you. Recorded at Jesus-Christus-Kirche, Berlin, 26-27 (Sym. He has been a loyal advocate of Sibelius in good times and bad - and however you may respond to this or that performance, Sibelians are in his debt.' The dominant impression that I am left with after this encounter is rather different from the popular image of the glossy superstar: he is completely direct, unaffected and wholly dedicated to the truth as he sees it. The recording team had been more than happy with the first take, as indeed they might well be for it was undeniably impressive, but the very pursuit of Sibelius's metronome marking, impossible though it really is, ensured the right character. Yet the very act of striving after the letter of the truth enabled him to capture the spirit. When he heard this played back, Karajan remarked that Sibelius's metronome indication was probably a shade too fast. I was almost reminded of the Beecham pre-war LemminkГ¤inen's Homeward Journey, composed only three years earlier, such was the excitement generated. But, as he rightly said, it was not up to speed - it did not represent the truth! A second take produced much more headlong, wilder playing even at the loss of some of the superbly controlled momentum of the earlier take. There had been no want of virtuosity on the part of the Berlin Philharmonic, nor was there any lack of fire or excitement in the insistent pounding of the lower strings. After recording the Scherzo, however, Karajan remained unhappy with the results. 'I have never for one moment thought that anecdotal chat about the mechanics of record making are of more than passing interest to the collector whose concern is first and foremost with the finished product. The interview talks about his focus on 4-7, whereas I think it's a pity that that wasn't 3-7, as among the symphonies 3 seems to me to be where he really finds real originality.Д«y the way, there's a good concluding peroration from Layton which HvK fans will enjoy, regarding a recording of Number 1! There is only reference to him having performed Number 1 prior to the interview date. It still doesn't really touch on the any aversion (or otherwise) to the third. later the same decade when Karajan re-recorded all the later symphonies with the Berlin Philharmonic, leaving the first three to the young Finnish conductor, Okko Kamu.' Was he, I wondered, not drawn to the more opulent textures of the first two symphonies? But this proved not to be the case: 'I have conducted the First Symphony in Germany during the war years but Walter Legge did not encourage me to record them during the 1950s.' 'Like many Sibelians, I had often wondered whether the fact that he had never recorded Nos 1 and 3, and unlike so many distinguished conductors had only made one version of No 2, might reflect lack of sympathy with the overt national-romanticism of early Sibelius.

There is a section here of an interview with Robert Layton: There is a Gramophone interview that gets at it, but I am currently paywalled.

Karajan sibelius 5