Edvard Grieg
Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 16
1. Allegro molto moderato
2. Adagio
3. Allegro moderato molto e marcato
Franz Liszt
4. Fantasy on Hungarian Folk Melodies, S123
Selim Palmgren
5. Piano Concerto No. 2, Op. 33 “The River”
August Winding
6. Concert Allegro in C minor Op. 29
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
1. 1812 Overture, Op. 49
Pablo de Sarasate
2. Zigeunerweisen, Op. 20
Camille Saint-Saëns
3. Introduction and Rondo capriccioso, Op. 28
Jenö Hubay
4. Hungarian Czárda Scenes: No. 4, Op. 32 (Hejre Kati)
Ludwig van Beethoven
5. Romance No. 2 in F major for violin and orchestra, Op. 50
Johan Svendsen
6. Romance in G major for violin and orchestra, Op. 26
Richard Strauss
7. Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche, Op. 28
Thomas Jensen Legacy, Vol. 11 ©
Martin Granau/Peter Quantrill
This collection brings together live DRSO broadcasts from the 1950s and the 1960s with earlier gramophone recordings, made before Jensen’s DRSO tenure when he was principal conductor of the Aarhus Civic Orchestra (documented on Volume 8 of the series [DACOCD 918]).
CD 1 presents several concertante works for piano and orchestra, including excerpts from two concerts given by the DRSO on a tour to Finland in March 1962. Danish State Radio released the DRSO for the tour, which was organized by the orchestra itself, while supporting it through transmission fees for two of the orchestra’s four concerts in Helsinki.
The orchestra’s visit to the Finnish capital formed a central component of a ‘Danish Week’ celebrating the culture of their neighbour. The opening concert took place on 24 March in the Solennitets Hall of Helsinki University, introduced by speeches including an appearance by the Danish Prime Minister Viggo Kampmann. The programme featured works by Nielsen and CFE Horneman as well as the Second Piano Concerto by the Finnish composer Selim Palmgren. Born in western Finland and educated primarily as a pianist at the conservatoire in Helsinki, Palmgren wrote the concerto between 1907 and 1912. Its subtitle, “The River” (in Finnish, “Virta”) refers to the Kokemaienjoki flowing through Palmgren’s childhood home town of Pori in the region of Bothnia.
Palmgren also found inspiration for the concerto in the Scandinavian myth of the ‘Neck’ – a supernatural being who lives in rivers and streams and who lures unsuspecting victims with his music. Näckens Polska (Neck’s Polka) is a Swedish folksong which forms the melodic core of this single-movement rhapsody. The style of the concerto shares a distinctively Finnish tone with the earlier music of Sibelius: picturesque, descriptive and grandiose, while the solo part is cast in the kind of late-romantic idiom of Rachmaninov.
Palmgren’s concerto was something of a calling-card for Schiøler on tour: in 1925 he had taken it to England, giving performances at the Henry Wood Proms and in Bournemouth under the baton of Sir Dan Godfrey. The DRSO’s Finnish tour also featured Schiøler as soloist in Grieg’s evergreen masterpiece: hardly a ‘Danish concerto’, but one written by Grieg while staying in the village of Søllerød near Copenhagen with his wife (and cousin), the Danish-born Nina Hagerup. The Norwegian pianist Edmund Neupert gave its premiere at the Casino Theatre in the Danish capital. While the 25-year-old Grieg quite obviously took Schumann’s A minor Concerto as his formal model, he integrated its form with orchestration derived from his study of Gade’s music and with his own twist on Norwegian folk melodies, which emerges most strongly in the finale: the main theme is derived from the halling, a distant cousin of the Scottish reel, which is then brilliantly transformed into a triple-time springdans in the final coda.
RELEASE DATE: April 2022
CATALOGUE NUMBER: 5709499921005
EAN: DACOCD 921
