Carl Nielsen
Symphony No. 5, Op. 50
1. Tempo giusto
2. Adagio non troppo
3. Allegro – Presto – Andante un poco tranquillo – Allegro (Tempo I)
4. Pan and Syrinx, Op. 49
Symphony No. 6 ‘Sinfonia Semplice’
5. Tempo giusto
6. Humoreske: Allegretto
7. Proposta seria: Adagio
8. Tema con variazioni
9. At the Bier of a Young Artist
Jean Sibelius
1. Finlandia, Op. 26
Symphony No. 1 in E minor, Op. 39
2. Andante, ma non troppo – Allegro energico
3. Andante (ma non troppo lento)
4. Scherzo: Allegro
5. Finale: Quasi una fantasia
Symphony No. 4 in A minor, Op. 63
6. Tempo molto moderato, quasi adagio
7. Allegro molto vivace
8. Il tempo largo
9. Allegro
Thomas Jensen Legacy, Vol. 13 ©
By Martin Granau/Peter Quantrill
This album presents the two great symphonists of the North, Nielsen and Sibelius, who placed Nordic music on the musical world map in the first decades of the last century. They were born in the same year, 1865, and their symphonies span the same period, from the 1890s to 1924, but the grammar of their symphonic language evolved contrastingly from affinities with Beethoven, then Brahms and Tchaikovsky. Sibelius continued to assert the strength of tonal relationships while Nielsen found more and more compelling cause to challenge them.
CD 1 completes the presentation of a Nielsen symphony cycle in this Thomas Jensen series. All six of the symphonies had been a staple of the DRSO’s repertoire from its earliest days. Launy Grøndahl led them as permanent conductor of DRSO (1925-56) except for the Fifth, which Nielsen had dedicated to Carl Johan Michaelsen, fatherin-law of Erik Tuxen. Together with Nielsen’s son-in-law, the violinist Emil Telmányi, and the composer Leif Kayser, Tuxen undertook a thorough revision of the printed score in 1950, shortly before taking the DRSO to the Edinburgh Festival where they gave an account of the symphony that would have a lasting impact on their reputation worldwide.
The performance of the Fifth presented here was recorded for Decca in April 1954 on the day before a demanding programme in the DRSO’s regular Thursday series with a completely different repertoire. The degree to which an authoritative reading had been passed down through the orchestra and its conductors may be adduced from comparing it with Tuxen’s recording for HMV.
During the course of the 1920s, Nielsen increasingly saw himself as an artist in an international light, in touch with currents of Europe-wide modernist thought. At the same time he looked inwards, finding a core of Danishness in his everyday dealings with people, and backwards, into his childhood and upbringing, which resulted in the memoir My Childhood on Funen from 1927, where he describes his development from fiddler’s son and military musician to conservatory-educated symphonist.
On a personal level, the 1920s were a turbulent decade for the composer. His affairs had been the cause of a separation from his wife, the sculptor Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen, but they resumed living together in 1922 in a State-owned artists’ house. Nielsen began to suffer heart problems, which led to his death on October 3, 1931, two days after he had given up conducting the DRSO in its inaugural concert at a new hall in Stærekassen.
RELEASE DATE: July 2022
CATALOGUE NUMBER: DACOCD 923
EAN: 5709499923009
