Rued Langaard
Symphony no.2 (1912-14/1926-33) BVN 53. (Manuscript) – Break of Spring (Spring Songs)
1. Allegro
2. Moderato con poco moto
3. Symphony no. 3 (1915-16/29-33) BVN 96 (Manuscript) – Rustle of Youth
4. Drapa (1907/09) BVN 20 (Manuscript) – Upon the Death of Edvard Grieg
Roma Owsinska – soprano (2)
Tadeusz Chmielewski – piano (3)
The Complete Symphonies Vol. 2 ©
Langgaard produced the first sketches for his second symphony during March 1912, but it was not until the summer holiday that he spent with his parents in Kyrkhult in Blekinge, Sweden, between June and August of that year that the final draft was completed. The following year, after the succesful performance in Berlin in April 1913 of his first symphony, the family was
back in Blekinge for its summer holidays, and work on the second symphony continucd.
The young Langgaard was at the time much taken by the work of the German poet Emil Rittershaus, who was reprcsented with several volumes in his parents’ library, and Langgaard composed a number of songs to texts by Rittershaus in the years to 1916. By March 1914 Langgaard had completed the orchestration of the symphony and incorporated in the last movement a soprano solo to words by Rittershaus. The text derives in fact from two poems: “Lenzklänge” (“Sounds of Spring”) and “Im Lenze” (“ln Spring”), from the anthology “Natur”.
Eight months later, in November 1914, thc symphony was given its first performance at the Danish Concert Society in Copenhagen by the composer Louis Glass who, incidentally, had also incorporated a vocal part in his own second symphony. The Langgaard work was given again in 1917, this time with Langgaard himself conducting, and in the following years it was played in Germany, in Essen and Berlin, and broadcast in South Germany.
ln 1922 Langgaard heard a performance of it in Vienna.
In its original version the symphony was in three movements and played for 40 minutes, but in June 1926 Langgaard commenced a revision, and only in 1933 did it find its final form. The symphony as we hear it today differs from the original version primarily in that the first two movements have become one, and that approximatly half of the material of the first movement has been excised.
RELEASE DATE: September 1992
CATALOGUE NUMBER: DACOCD 405
EAN: 5709499405000
