19.09.2011 - Carl Nielsen

[Tony Halstead]

Agreed!
Maybe start a Tubin thread?

[Serial_Apologist]

Agreed!
Maybe start a Tubin thread?

I agree! The question, Tubin or not Tubin, has been shelved by Radio 3 for far too long

[Roehre]

I agree! The question, Tubin or not Tubin, has been shelved by Radio 3 for far too long

wholeheartedly seconding a Tubin thread

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

My first experience of a Nielsen work was a performance of the 5th symphony at the Free Trade Hall in the 1960s. I didn't much care for it, but that was largely because I was trying to understand the rathe bizarre programme notes which concentrated on the (imagined?) meanings of the key relationships within the symphony. I lost the programme and forgot most of what it had said, so that when I heard it again, I was mightily impressed.

[ardcarp]

Nudging the thread away from his symphonies for a moment, does anyone know his piano works? I've got the lot on a couple of CDs. They vary hugely in style and he had a most original musical voice. In fact, Nielsen is one of those composers whose music I find hard to identify if it falls on 'the innocent ear'.

Really enjoyed Springtime on Funen today BTW.

[Chris Newman]

I dug out my Springtime in Funen CD today, the Tamas Veto one originally on Unicorn Kanchana (now, I believe on Regis) which is by far and away the most charming recording. The recording dates from 1986 and I find the sleeve notes are by Stephen Johnson. Gosh, he must have been almost a schoolboy then.

[jayne lee wilson]

Ofcachap! You don't know what you've just said! That Kuchar cycle is buried treasure!

Anyone who loves Nielsen (or wants to start listening to him) go to Amazon NOW and buy the fabulous Brilliant Box of Kuchar and the Janacek PO playing this extraordinary, little-reviewed cycle! It's gloriously well-recorded, rich, full and resonant, musically the equal of Chung's BIS readings from the 80s, with a rare blend of power, brilliance and insight into the music's essence.
Drawbacks? Not really - just occasionally you might hear a lack of sheer bite and firepower of more famous ensembles. The strings aren't as full as in Gothenburg (not many are!) but they're not far behind, and cut through the complex textures well. You'll find reviews by Jack Lawson on Musicweb and the ever-controversial David Hurwitz on ClassicsToday. But don't worry about him, just a few bars of the lovable no.1 will have you smiling, get it from Amazon to reassure yourself, but it won't go back, it'll will dominate your CD player for days.

I have the Schonwandt cycle, the SFSO/Blomstedt, LSO/Schmidt on Regis, the viscerally stunning BIS set with Chung outstanding in 1-3 and 5 - Jarvi less so in 4&6, and many separate discs from Martinon/Gould in Chicago, Davis' very fine recent LSO 4&5, a live Gewandhaus fifth with Blomstedt...
but it's Kuchar I always go back to first, usually with Chung alongside. It is - or should be - a new reference. It's almost everything the Chung might have been if he'd done them all, but often at a higher emotional temperature, and has superior sound, by a fair margin, to all the others.
(Trust the reviews editor of the Gramophone to be ignorant of it in his recent Nielsen piece... I wrote in and... they didn't acknowledge or print the letter.)

The BIS box includes a gorgeous disc of the 3 concertos, all beautifully done, you may be able to find it separately. When the BIS cycle first appeared some of the CDs carried a warning about uncompressed dynamic range!
The Martinon 4/Gould 2 RCA Classic Library reissue (2006) by the way, has far better sound than the original Navigators. It's a DSD remaster.

There's a Radio Times offer for a 3 CD set of the symphonies for £9.99 (incl. p & p), recorded in 2006 by the Janacek Philharmonic Orchestra under Theodore Kuchar. Might be useful for somebody starting out on an exploration of Nielsen's work. Mind you, the San Francisco/Blomstedt recordings are probably available for not much more. Do other Nielsen admirers out there have problems with the 6th symphony? (I'm not sure whether, or how, the various elements relate to one another - if, indeed, they're intended to).

[jayne lee wilson]

Ah, the 6th!

Probably the only work of his that DOES give me trouble, almost entirely due to the second movement.
It sounds, to me, too obviously and limitingly what it is: a parody, to my ear a rather shallow one, of those trends in modern music that Nielsen disliked.
Nielsen wrote about it, "Times change. Where is music going? What is permanent? We don't know".
This perspective may seem to rescue the piece, if he intends it as a self-parody as much as anything, but the experience of repeated hearings, for me, is one of slight impatience, waiting to get back to the main argument in the (truly sublime) slow movement.
(Do such parodies ever really work? Doesn't Bartok's sneer at the Leningrad in The Concerto for Orchestra 4th movement now sound misplaced, lacking understanding?)

I have few problems with the finale, where the much greater invention and musical substance allows the sarcasm and humour to tell a deeper story - if still a mysterious one.

The first movement, it doesn't quite go without saying, is one of his greatest symphonic achievements, standing in relation to Nielsen as the 1st movement of Mahler's 9th does to his cycle.

Sometimes I enjoy no.6, sometimes not... Thomas Jensen's mono one may do better than most at trying to forge a unity, but loving Nielsen as much as I do it remains a puzzle - quite a disturbing one.

Mind you, what on earth do you follow the 5th with?!

There's a Radio Times offer for a 3 CD set of the symphonies for £9.99 (incl. p & p), recorded in 2006 by the Janacek Philharmonic Orchestra under Theodore Kuchar. Might be useful for somebody starting out on an exploration of Nielsen's work. Mind you, the San Francisco/Blomstedt recordings are probably available for not much more. Do other Nielsen admirers out there have problems with the 6th symphony? (I'm not sure whether, or how, the various elements relate to one another - if, indeed, they're intended to).

[Ventilhorn]

Ah, the 6th!

Sometimes I enjoy no.6, sometimes not...

Mind you, what on earth do you follow the 5th with?!

For me, a treble measure of a good single malt whiskey (Glenmorange for preference)

Sorry Jayne. I'm feeling a bit flippant this morning. (Have I finally flipped?)

VH

[Panjandrum]

Yesterday's COTW via ListenAgain was available at 56kbps. What the hell is the BBC playing at here? I have complained to the powers that be in order to nip this nonsense in the bud.

[jayne lee wilson]

Good evening, VH.

I'm shortly to succumb to a double choca mocha and a Courvoisier (look, it's all I can afford...) on this chilly September night.

Cheers
JLW

For me, a treble measure of a good single malt whiskey (Glenmorange for preference)

Sorry Jayne. I'm feeling a bit flippant this morning. (Have I finally flipped?)

VH

[Chris Newman]

Ah, the 6th!

Sometimes I enjoy no.6, sometimes not... Thomas Jensen's mono one may do better than most at trying to forge a unity, but loving Nielsen as much as I do it remains a puzzle - quite a disturbing one.

Mind you, what on earth do you follow the 5th with?!

Thomas Jensen really does get something extra out of this symphony, something that recent interpreters with all the modern technology at their disposal cannot never quite reach. Mind you, most of my favourite Nielsen recordings are those of Tuxen, Grondahl and Jensen.

[Tony Halstead]

" those of Tuxen, Grondahl and Jensen"
could you maybe consider adding the name of Sir Alexander Gibson to those, Chris?
I played ( in orchestras) for him on, sadly, only a handful of occasions, but I felt ( and still do feel) that he had a real empathy with Nielsen ( maybe because he himself was such a Quixotic character) and to a greater degree than with his Sibelius performances, excellent although they were.

[Chris Newman]

I wish I had heard Sir Alex in Nielsen. He gave me much pleasure on records with Sibelius where he was my real introduction to the composer. On reflection I feel he was (along with Beecham and Boult) probably one of the finest conductors of the tone poems and incidental pieces. Colin Davis, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Osmo Vanska draw deeper draughts in the symphonies.

I loved his Scottish Opera Trojans (Berlioz) and Rosenkavalier both with Janet Baker in Glasgow.

I treasure memories too of her singing Mahler's Ruckert Lieder with him at the Proms and at least 3 performances of Brahms Second Symphony which he loved. Then there was Wilfred Mellors' Yebichai which the Albert Hall owners tried to censor as it contained the expression "bear-shit". It was agreed that the ladies of the BBC Symphony Chorus would omit the offending word. Alex and Wilf worked the Prom queues and got the Promenaders to shout it at the moment it appeared in the printed programme. Acts 1 and 3 of Wagner's Siegfried were enlivened by a weak Siegfried (Ticho Parly) who kept entereing late so Alex sang much of the part with him: he was actually much better.

His Sibelius and Dvorak at the Proms were also a treat.

You are a bad lad, Waldhorn. I have just spotted some Gibson/Nielsen floating with the River People.

[barber olly]

I'm looking forward to this. I admire his music very much. I discovered it many years ago, when I was working in a record shop on Saturdays, and promptly spent most of my meagre wages on records. At that stage as a teenager I was still discovering Beethoven and Tchaikovsky symphonies, but sometimes I would be daring and some Mozart. I ordered the records I wanted by number, and one day I must have written in down incorrectly, and got, much to my surprise Nielsen's 4th conducted by Martinon. It was a revelation.

Reading your thread reminds me of my bargain label LP buying days. I guess you probably did not write the wrong number down. My guess is that the number you wrote down was VICS1148, which was Beethoven Syms 1/8 VPO Monteux, which was deleted when RCA became independent of Decca. RCA then reallocated the number to the Martinon Nielsen 4 resulting in your serendipitous acquisition. Did you use the Penguin Basrgain Guides to make your selections?