Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Violin Concerto in D, Op. 35
1. Allegro moderato
2. Canzonetta, Andante
3. Finale: Allegro vivacissimo
Janine Andrade, Violin
Jean Sibelius
King Kristian II Suite Op. 27
1. Nocturne
Paul Hindemith
Symphonic Metamorphosis on Themes of Carl Maria von Weber (1943)
1. Allegro
2. Scherzo (Turandot): Moderato
3. Andantino
4. Marsch
Guillaume Landré
Clarinet Concerto (1957/58)
Molto tranquillo – Con moto e molto rubato – Lento molto – Vivo – Molto lento – Vivace
Arne Møller, Clarinet
CD 2
Jørgen Bentzon
Variations Op. 28 for Small Orchestra (1936)
Maurice Karkoff
Symphony No. 3 Op. 38 ‘Sinfonia breve’ (1958-59)
Adagio – Allego moderato – Andante
Geirr Tveitt
Hardanger Suite No. 1, Op. 151 (1950/1954)
1. Velkommen med æra (Welcome)
2. Flyteljod (Flute Melody)
3. Fagraste viso pao Joræ (The Most Beautiful Song in the World)
4. Moltor og myrabaæ (Mulberries and Blackberries)
5. Stavkyrkjestev (Stave Church Song)
6. A naoe meg no fø mi tusta (Save me for my beloved)
7. Uppskoka (Toast to the New Beer)
8. Syrgjeleg song um ein tom brennevinsdunk (Sad Song about an Empty Brandy Glass)
9. Langeleiklat (Langeleik’s Melody)
10. Stølstone (Echo Song from the Mountains)
11. Hastverksbrudlaup (Hasty Wedding)
12. Guds Godhet og Guds Storhet (God‘s Goodness and Greatness)
13. Vise folks folkevisa um visse folk (Wise People’s Gossip)
14. Storkrytarstev (The Big Boaster)
Emmanuel Chabrier
España (1883)
Adolphe Adam
La poupée de Nuremberg
Overture
Trad. arr. Percy Grainger
Country Gardens (1918)
Eric Coates
London Suite (1933)
3. Knightbridge March
Franz Schubert
Marche Militaire No. 1, D733
Thomas Jensen ©
Presenting performances from the last two years of Jensen’s life, this collection demonstrates the breadth of his repertoire, and also the adaptability of his orchestra, capable as it was of moulding itself to the interpretative personalities of different conductors in canon repertoire, giving dedicate and accurate accounts of new music, and turning to rarities such as the suite by Geir Tveitt.
The series of Sunday Concerts was programmed as a lighter alternative to the Thursday Concerts, although there was a good deal of repertoire common to bothseries, such as the Violin Concerto by Tchaikovsky, heard in this broadcast from April 1962. The French violinist Janine Andrade (1918-97) is almost forgotten today, though as a pupil of Carl Flesch and Jacques Thibaud at the Paris Conservatoire she had the kind of top-rank training that developed her as a musically sensitive virtuoso with an individual timbre. Her career had to wait until after the war, and centred on her native France, before it was tragically cut short by a stroke in 1972.
Not for nothing did Hindemith give the title of Symphonic Metamorphosis rather than Variations to the orchestral work he wrote while in wartime exile in the US. A ballet project with Léonide Massine fell through, and Hindemith treated his chosen themes from Weber’s music with an extreme virtuosity of invention, perhaps with the technical polish and fifinesse of US orchestras in mind (though, ironically, many of their members were European emigres too).
A DRSO concert in November 1961 presented even more recent music, including the Clarinet Concerto by the Dutch composer Guillaume Landré. Learning first of all from his father, Willem Landré, and then the the distinguished composer and pedagogue Willem Pijper. Landré wrote in a chromatic-tonal idiom, including a set of Symphonic Permutations bearing less of a resemblance to Hindemith (in terms both of form and harmony) than to the more austerely contrapuntal ‘metamorphosis’ techniques of Vagn Holmboe and Niels Viggo Bentzon, as heard in previous instalments of this Jensen series.
In the same concert as Landré’s Clarinet Concerto, Jensen conducted the Third Symphony of Maurice Karkoff, another figure now almost completely forgotten. Born in Stockholm, Karkoff studied with Lars-Eric Larsson (a Swedish counterpart to Pijper, more inflfluential as a teacher than a composer) and then farther afield with figures as diverse as Luigi Dallapiccola, André Jolivet and Max Deutsch.
Returning to the Sunday-series concert which featured Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, Geir Tveit himself presented the first of his suites of Hardanger Folk Tunes, with explanation and demonstrations of the original songs much to the amusement of the studio audience. With these suites, Tveit aimed to preserve a Norwegian tradition of singing and storytelling in the mould of Bartók in Hungary and Bulgaria, Launy Grøndahl in Denmark and Percy Grainger in England. The suite sketches everyday life in homes, churches and fields, through vignettes of a wedding, a drinking song, blackberry-picking and so on.
The concert also featured Grainger’s best-known free arrangement of a folk song, Country Gardens, alongside a trio of lighter works beginning with the brilliant rhapsody-evocation of Spain by Chabrier.
RELEASE DATE: March 2024
CATALOGUE NUMBER: DACOCD 931
EAN: 5709499931004
