Thomas Jensen Legacy, Vol. 4

Review: ClassicalMusicDaily
Carl Nielsen
Symphony No. 1 in G minor, Op. 7
1. I. Allegro orgoglioso
2. II. Andante
3. III. Allegro comodo
4. IV. Finale: Allegro con fuoco

Little Suite for Strings in A minor, Op. 1
5. I. Prelude: Andante con moto
6. II. Intermezzo: Allegro moderato
7. III. Finale: Andante con moto – Allegro con brio

Symphony No. 2, Op. 16 ‘The Four Temperaments’
8. I. Allegro collerico
9. II. Allegro comodo e flammatico
10. III. Andante malincolico
11. IV. Allegro sanguineo

CD 2

Herman D. Koppel
1. Fest-Overture, Op. 33

Vagn Holmboe
Epitaph: Symphonic Metamorphose, Op. 68
2. I. Allegro con fuoco
3. II. Andante tranquillo – Piu mosso – Lento – Andante
4. III. Allegro con brio

Svend Erik Tarp
Symphony No. 2 in E flat, Op. 50
5. I. Meditativo
6. II. Animato
7. III. Sereno

Poul Schierbeck
8. Largo for string orchestra, Op. 33
9. Paraphrase over I Danmark er jeg født, Op. 43
10. Natten, Op. 41
11. Häxa, Op. 48

Thomas Jensen Legacy, Vol. 4 ©
By Martin Granau/Peter Quantrill

CD 1 presents three formative works in Nielsen’s early career; his influence on the next generation of Danish composers is then traced on CD2 by works by Koppel, Holmboe and Tarp. Despite its opus number, the Little Suite was hardly Nielsen’s very first work; as he remembered in his autobiography, he was eight or nine when he wrote a lullaby (now lost) and a polka (notated in the memoirs). However, composition was a modest part of his life at least until September 1887, when a concert at the Tivoli pleasure gardens in Copenhagen included the first performance of a piece for string orchestra, Andante tranquillo e Scherzo. Nielsen took the subsequent premiere of an F major string quartet in January 1888 as a definitive point of departure in his life as a composer, but a much stronger impression on the public at large was made by the Little Suite when it was first performed at Tivoli on 8 September 1888. The performance was conducted by Balduin Dahl, the Tivoli’s music director for the past 15 years, who had advised the young composer to remove his original subtitles to the three movements: ‘The Danaids’, ‘The Dance of the Charites’ and ‘The Procession of Bacchus’. ‘It was a pleasure to hear Mr. Carl Nielsen’s Suite for String Orchestra,’ reported the Avisen newspaper. ‘The young man obviously has a great deal on his musical mind that he wants to say, and what he told us on Saturday was presented in a beautiful, concise form, modestly and attractively, with excellent part-writing and an appealing fullness of sound that reveals an excellent eye for the string material. There is every reason to congratulate the young man on this – as far as we know his public debut. The Suite was a decided success; the middle movement had to be played da capo, and after the last performance the composer, who clearly aroused much sympathy with his great youth, was called out three times. The applause was well deserved, and we may hope that it will stimulate Mr. Nielsen to new efforts to make his unmistakable talent bear fruit.

The performance of the Suite was excellent, and Mr. Dahl deserves warm appreciation, because he offers the young shelter under his musical wings; there are unfortunately so few places in this country they can turn to.’

Not everyone was so enthusiastic about the Suite; Niels W. Gade, Nielsen’s old conservatoire teacher, for one, with the possibly apocryphal but pithy remark that ‘Little Nielsen, you mess too much!’ Perhaps Nielsen took Gade’s words to heart, because he subsequently revised the suite’s finale as well as the movement titles. If anything the delicacy and airy textures of the string writing in the outer movements anticipate the style of Nielsen’s Finnish contemporary, Jean Sibelius – another ‘slow developer’ in music – while clearly flowing from the same neoclassical source as the Holberg Suite composed by Grieg four years earlier. Nevertheless there are traces of the voice that would become Nielsen’s own in the characteristic major-minor vacillation which is imbues the second movement with its hesitant quality and surges of purpose. Thomas Jensen conducted this mid-war performance with the ensemble which has a justified claim on the title of the world’s oldest orchestra, belonging to the Royal Chapel in Copenhagen, with its roots in the trumpet corps founded in 1448 during the reign of King Christian IV.

While the Suite achieved a measure of success, the watershed moment in Nielsen’s career arrived with the First Symphony, given its first performance by the orchestra of the Royal Chapel in March 1894 conducted by Johan Svendsen. Five years earlier the composer had joined the ensemble as a full-time member and just as he had done for the premiere of the Suite, he played in the second-violin section. A laconic note in his diary attests that ‘The symphony brought great happiness and I was evoked three times after the last movement.’

What has become known as Nielsen’s voice is established from the very outset of the First Symphony by its decisive C major chord and unexpected twist into G minor, where most of the action takes place. A battle between the two tonalities (distantly related through the kind of modal harmonies familiar to Nielsen as a folk-fiddler from his childhood on the island of Funen) is fought throughout the four movements, sometimes covertly, sometimes in the open, and the struggle is not less satisfying for the eventual outcome being hardly in doubt.

RELEASE DATE: September 2021

CATALOGUE NUMBER: DACOCD 914

EAN: 5709499914007