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Felix Mendelssohn
1. A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Overture, Op. 21

Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64
2. I. Allegro molto appassionato
3. II. Andante – Allegretto non troppo
4. III. Allegro molto vivace

Symphony No. 3 in A minor, Op. 56 ‘Scottish’
5. I. Andante con moto – Allegro un poco agitato
6. II. Vivace non troppo
7. III. Adagio
8. IV. Allegro vivacissimo – Allegro maestoso assai

CD 2

George Frideric Handel
Concerto grosso, Op. 6 No. 1 in G major, HWV319
1. I. A tempo giusto
2. II. Allegro
3. III. Adagio
4. IV. Allegro
5. V. Allegro

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Piano Concerto No. 21 in C major, K467
6. I. Allegro maestoso
7. II. Andante
8. III. Allegro vivace assai

Niels W. Gade
Novelettes in F major, Op. 53
9. I. Andantino – Allegro vivace e grazioso
10. II. Scherzo: Moderato
11. III. Andantino con molto
12. IV. Allegro vivace

Antonín Dvořák
13. Carnival Overture, Op. 92

Thomas Jensen Legacy, Vol. 5 ©
By Martin Granau/Peter Quantrill

The music of Felix Mendelssohn had long enjoyed a central place in the repertoire of the DRSO. While CD1 presents a concert from January 1962, the orchestra had played the very same programme back in 1925, shortly after their formation. Even during the first three years of the German occupation in 1940-45, the DRSO had continued to include Mendelssohn in its concerts at a time when the Jewish composer’s music was widely banned elsewhere.

The desirability of featuring more German (or the ‘right’ kind of German) music and musicians had been pointed out more than once to F.E. Jensen, who had succeeded Emil Holm as head of Danish Radio in 1937. On each occasion, however, Jensen demurred and pointed out that the initial command had been to uphold the standard and the ethos of the station’s output from before the occupation. Therefore, the DRSO carried on playing the Italian and Scottish symphonies, the Violin Concerto and orchestrations of the Songs without Words. One of these perennially attractive miniatures was among the most frequently played Mendelssohn items in the repertoire of the DRSO, Frühlingslied (Spring Song, Op 62 No 6), alongside the Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Late in August 1943, however, the Germans lost patience and imposed a list of prohibited composers on the Danish broadcasting company. This list included Mendelssohn, and so his music largely disappeared from the schedules – only to return with all the greater fervour after the occupation, when both the Scottish Symphony and the Midsummer Night’s Dream Overture were played by the orchestra in its first post-war season of regular Thursday concerts.

Henrik Sachsenskjold (1918-2016), soloist in the Violin Concerto, first appeared with the DRSO in 1944. During the war he had studied composition with Poul Schierbeck, several of whose works featured in Volume 4 of this Jensen series. Soon after the war, however, he began to take up conducting, first of all under the guidance of the Danish pedagogue Svend Christian Felumb and later with Paul van Kempen. Thereafter he became a regular conductor of the Tivoli Orchestra, concurrently with a successful career as a concerto soloist. In 1961 he took up a professorship at the conservatoire in Copenhagen and thereafter maintained an element of teaching to his career until his retirement in 1988. He was married to another notable figure in Danish musical life, the pianist Amalie Malling, and together they recorded the violin sonatas of Nielsen.

RELEASE DATE: October 2021

CATALOGUE NUMBER: DACOCD 915

EAN: 5709499915004