It is customary for historians to draw a line between Sibelius's dissonant, austere Fourth Symphony (1911) and the seemingly more accessible, comfortable Fifth (whose three versions received their premieres in 1915, 1916, and 1919). The gap often alleged to separate the two symphonies is that dividing the spirit of artistic ‘progress’ in the earlier work from its presumed absence in the later. However simplistic, the line has served to divide a generally legitimate earlier Sibelius, whose works may be approached without apology (especially the earlier ones, which can be conveniently, though reductively, collapsed into the somewhat tainted category of ‘nationalism’), from a problematic, post-Fourth Symphony composer, whose idiosyncratic works clung to an eclipsed symphonic tradition in markedly anti-Romantic times.

Commentators have consequently embraced the Fourth Symphony, which in its uncompromising stance has traditionally been considered the most forward-looking of Sibelius's seven. The Fifth's more overt orchestral effects, triumphant conclusion, and popular appeal have required a bit of dodging, even for champions of the later works. ‘The fifth symphony, with its imposing finale and heroic proportions’, wrote Constant Lambert in 1934, ‘might at first sight seem to be a mature reversion to an earlier mood, and it may be described as the most obviously great of Sibelius’ symphonies.