Review by tintagel April 7, 2007 (8 of 9 found this review helpful)
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I have a fair number of Nielsen discs in my collection and love his music inordinately. Neeme Jarvi's disc of overtures etc has long been a favourite, but this has to be heard to be believed.
Quite frankly, I don't think I've ever heard any Nielsen quite so convincingly player or conducted, and that's saying a lot when you look at some of the outrageously good Symphony Cycles around (Blomstedt, Schonwandt, Thomson.....).
To put it simply, this disc is highly addictive. Helios is just glorious and the strange, bird-like calls in the Faroe Fantasy have surely never sounded quite like this. The full-throated horns in Pan and Syrinx are incredible. It isn't just a matter of zest or accurate playing (present in abundance...make no mistake there!), it's that demonic sense of a mission being undertaken that does it for me.
And that's just the performances on musical grounds. When you add in sound of spectacular weight, the glowing woodwind sounds, the bright and powerful brass and the wonderful bloom within a very nice acoustic the result moves onto a different plane again. The MC version is handled very beautifully. It strikes me that the use of the rear channels is subtle but still quite significant.
Game, set and match to the Danish NRSO and Dausgaard I would say. It just doesn't get any better than this!
Nick
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Review by jlaurson October 10, 2007 (3 of 5 found this review helpful)
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Hans Abrahamsen. Jørgen and Niels Viggo Bentzon. Håkon Børresen. August Enna. Niels Wilhelm Gade. Louis Glass. Bo Holten. Paul von Klenau. Herman D. Koppel & Sons. Ludolf Nielsen. Per Nørgård. Knudåge Riisager. Poul Ruders. Some of the many Danish composers that are anywhere between largely and completely unknown. When we think of Scandinavian music, the Finn Jean Sibelius and the Norwegian Edvard Grieg (whose death’s 100th anniversary we celebrate this year) come to mind. Swedish composers are also largely unknown. Too few are familiar with the delightful works of Hugo Alfvén, Kurt Atterberg, Joseph Martin Kraus, Wilhelm Peterson-Berger, Allan Pettersson, Ture Rangström, Wilhelm Stenhammar, or Eduard Tubin.
The first Danish composer that comes to mind – completing the Scandinavian Triumvirate with Sibelius and Grieg – is Carl Nielsen. Follwing Nielsen you’ll find – eventually – Vagn Holmboe and Rued Langgaard. You’ll be hard pressed to ever find Leif Kayser – but if and when you do, you might like to thank the Danish record label DACAPO that you did.
There’s a richness and variety to Danish music that belies the obscurity of its composers or the size of the country with a population of just over 5 million. A quick stop at Carl Nielsen (1865 - 1931) who is famous enough not to need an introduction. If you like Sibelius – and the symphonic form as such – Nielsen is mandatory. Osmo Vänskä’s BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra recordings on BIS are fine, but Herbert Blomstedt’s LA recordings on Decca are still the likely first choice. (If you have Neeme Järvi’s cycle on DG, or Berglund’s on RCA, or Schonwandt’s on DACAPO, you are not off badly, either.) No matter how many Nielsen Symphonies you have, you must listen to what Morton Gould and Jean Martinon do with the 2nd and 4th Symphony, respectively. And if you have no Nielsen at all, do start with this, finally re-issued, budget RCA disc.
All the concertos can be had conveniently on Blomstedt’s Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra EMI two disc set. But the most important of them, the aggressive clarinet concerto, you might want to sample with Martin Fröst and Osmo Vänskä on BIS, while the Violin Concerto is well coupled with Sibelius and executed by the very the able hands of Cho-Liang Lin and Esa-Pekka Salonen (Sony). What brought Carl Nielsen to my ears most recently was a hybrid SACD by DACAPO with Thomas Dausgaard conducting Nielsen’s orchestral music. For now this sounds like the definitive contribution to the Snefried Suite, the overtures (to Maskarade, “Saul og David”, and the “Rhapsodisk” and Helios Overtures) as well as some smaller, lesser known works. Terrific in sound and playing, this is what the Nielsen lover wants in his stockings this year.
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