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Rued Langgaard
Symphony no. 1 (1908/09-11) – “Rock Pastorals”
1. Surf and Sunlight
2. Mountain flora
3. Legend
4. Mountain ascent
5. Courage

Ilya Stupel – Conductor
Artur Rubinstein Philharmonic Ochestra

The Complete Symphonies Vol. 1 ©

Rued (Rud) Immanuel Langgaard was born in Copenhagen on 28th July 1893, the only child of the composer and pianist Siegfried Langgaard (1852 – 1914) and his wife, the pianist Emma Langgaard, née Foss. Hc grew up respecting the classical-romantic tradition in Danish music, which spanned from Niels W. Gade to Horneman, and admiring foreign composers such as Wagner and Liszt. Siegfried Langgaard had studied with Liszt for two periods during 1878 – 79 and the piano concerto he composed was the first instance of the great late-romantic concerto in Denmark.
Rued was given his first piano tuition by his mother aged only five, and within two years he had mastered Chopin’s mazurkas and Schumann’s Davidsbündler-Tänze. His father then took over the training of the young boy, who at about this time produced his first compositions. His further theoretical studies took place at the Horneman Conservatoire of Music, and he studied the violin and organ with Messrs. C. Petersen and G. Helsted respectively.
Langgaard’s first public appearance was at a recital in Copenhagen’s Marmorkirkcn in 1905, at which he improvised at the organ. Grieg was present and expressed his admiration for the prodigy. His debut as a composer came in 1908 with the choral work Musae triuphante, which he had completed two years earlier, but it was not well received. During the same year he commenced work on his first symphony which was givcn its first performance in 1913 by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra under no less a figure than Max Fiedler. The symphonic poem Sphinx was premiered at the same concert, which thus established Langgaard as a highly-gifted and extremely promising young composer.
After the death of Langgaard père in 1914, the young man’s mother became the focal point of his life, watching and (over-)protecting her remote and introvcrtcd son’s artistic developmcnt. ln a letter to a family friend the lady quoted her son as follows: “l (Rued Langgaard) want to wander on sacred paths, paths open not unto mankind but unto the spirit alone. Earthly spheres are too low for me; human emotion, in so far as it adheres to the body, too imperfect”. Evidence indeed of a sensitive and original young person!
Three months after the death of his father Langgaard made his conducting debut at the Copcnhagen Music Society. During this period he was also assistant organist at the Marmorkirken and Garnisonskirken churches while, as a composer, the years from 1910 to the early 1920’s were his most productive and artistically succcssful. He was awarded a number of grants as well as a life-long annual bursary from the Danish government. Betwccn 1920 and 1923 he travelled to Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Italy, conducting his own works (the 4th symphony in Heidelberg and Darmstadt) and hearing the interpretations of others (the 2nd symphony in Vienna, in 1922). lt was also at this time that he began to withdraw from the established Danish, or rather Copenhagen” musical life. A series of vehement attacks by his mothcr on the new musical ideals of the age dragged Langgaard and his lateromantic idiom into the struggle betwccn what was seen to be performable and what was no longcr considered comme il faut. The new purist attitude to church music similarly left Langgaard’s subjective and evocative artistry out in the cold.
While his artistic ability was of course all his own, there can be little doubt that his domineering parents, with their roots in the earlier generation’s esthetic ideals, and in particular his father’s theosophical bcliefs,left the young Langgaard in a situation that was to the benefit of neither himself nor Danish music in general. He had – like the hero of an inverse Hans Christian Andersen fairy-tale – turned from a white duckling into an ugly swan.
His mother dicd in 1926 and, one year later, Langgaard married Valborg Constance Tetens, who was two years his senior and who had been living with the family for four years. Apart from a brief tenure as organist at the church of Christiansborg Castle in Copenhagen from 1926 to 1929 his applications for a permanent position as an organist were in vain.
During the 1930’s Langgaard’s output, which by then totalled more than 200 works, began to fall dramatically. Apart from the revision of the 5th symphony only one major work – Messis, a drama for organ in three “evenings” – appeared during this period. In 1921 he founded his own Classical music Society in order to “counterbalance the horrors of modern music”, but it came apart after only three concerts.
In 1940, at the age of 47, he was made organist at the cathedral of the small West Jutland town of Ribe, an appointment he himself considered his final banishment from Copenhagen musical life. A large number of his liturgical organ works were composed in Ribe, as were the last seven symphonies. Much of his production from this latter period were to remain unperformed, among them the l6th and last symphony, composed the year before his death on 10th July 1952.
After her husband’s death Constance Langgaard made a great effort to bring order and system to the wealth of music he had left, and her list was the only catalogue in existcnce until Bendt Viinholt Nielsen in 1991 published his complete, annotated catalogue on Odense University Press. Upon Constance Langgaard’s death in 1969 the composer’s works were entrusted to a foundation.

RELEASE DATE: MAY 1992

CATALOGUE NUMBER: DACOCD 404

EAN: 5709499404003

Product Type

CD, MP3, FLAC