For you admirers of great Danes, today marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of Carl Nielsen, Denmark’s most celebrated composer.

It would be several decades following his death (in 1931, of heart disease) before Nielsen’s music really started to gain traction abroad. It was Leonard Bernstein who prophesied, “I think many people are in for pleasant surprises as they get to know Nielsen: his rough charm, his swing, his drive, his rhythmic surprises, his strange power of harmonic and tonal relationships – and especially his constant unpredictability – all these are irresistible. I feel confident that Nielsen’s time has come.”

Though Bernstein put his money where his mouth was by turning in one of the great Nielsen recordings (of the Symphony No. 5, in 1962), the composer’s reputation failed to blossom in anywhere near the same way that Bernstein’s other “rediscovery,” Gustav Mahler, had. Even in the pantheon of Nordic symphonists, Nielsen has consistently sat at the feet of Jean Sibelius.

Which is really too bad. Nielsen’s music may be an acquired taste, but it is a rewarding one. There really is nothing else quite like it. The puckish wit, the ambiguities, the quirky juxtaposition of seemingly disparate melodies, harmonies and key signatures, all shot through very often with a sense of hope and optimism that rises above the chaos.

Here’s Lenny, conducting the Danes on their own turf, in what may be my favorite Nielsen symphony, the Symphony No. 3:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5sbcF7p0Pk

Happy birthday, Carl Nielsen!

PHOTO: In his most optimistic gesture, Nielsen wears white to a vineyard