Version 2-From the preface: Symphony No. 5 constitutes a special 'family of works' within Rued Langgaard's output. The starting-point was the orchestral piece Summer Legend Drama which was written in1917-18 and premiered at the Nordic Music Festival in Copenhagen on 16 June 1919 with Frederik Schnedler-Petersen as conductor. After a revision in 1941 this work was entitledA Thing of the Past (BVN 140). In 1920 Langgaard wrote his Symphonic Festival Play (BVN 166) which he based on Summer Legend Drama but which incorpo rates a new middle section and a new conclusion and at the same time is considerablyshorter.The composer conducted the Symphonic Festival Play himself at the Danish Concert Society on 20 April 1921. The following year the work was performed in Berlin by the Blüthner Orchestra and in Vienna by the Vienna Symphony Orchestra on both occasions under the direction of the German conductor Hans Seeber-van der Floe. Langgaard's next step was to abbreviate and revise the Summer Legend Drama in 1926; he presented it at a concert on 11 April 1927 in Copenhagen under the designation Symphony no. 5 (one movement). This is the version that the composer later named 'version 1' and which the Rued Langgaard Edition published in 2002.
