Like “The Ugly Duckling” of his compatriot, Hans Christian Andersen, Carl Nielsen emerged from humble beginnings to blossom into Denmark’s national composer. Internationally, Nielsen has flitted in and out of the seemingly inescapable shadow of Finnish master Jean Sibelius. Both men were born in 1865. In fact, Nielsen was six months older. But it is an unfair comparison, not so much apples and oranges; more like kipper and pickled herring.
The very fact that Nielsen is not referred to reductively as “The Sibelius of Denmark” is attributable to an unusually strong individual voice. His music is modern, yet traditional; Scandinavian, yet Germanic. Most important, it is full of personality, freshness and vitality.
Nielsen’s Wind Quintet of 1922 reflects the composer’s optimism and good humor. These he retained despite great personal, professional, and global turmoil. Each part of the quintet was tailored to the personality of the individual performer for which it was written (all members of the Copenhagen Wind Quintet). There is also something of the outdoors about the piece. Nielsen was always fascinated by nature, and there are ample suggestions of bird song woven into the texture of the work’s pastoral neoclassicism.
Even so, I find something appealing about musicians standing and playing the piece indoors, especially if it happens to be inside a tastefully-appointed, classically-proportioned art gallery. Here it is, performed by the ensemble CARION (nothing to do with dead animals, presumably) at the Carlsberg Museum in Copenhagen.
I would have preferred that the filmmaker’s cuts had been handled a little more sensitively. Maybe I’m a little sensitive myself (I have been known to verge on the irritable), but if the edits aren’t “musical,” they give me tiny, disruptive jolts. The tendency now is to shake things in front of everybody’s eyeballs like they’re little babies that need to be distracted.
I venture to guess everyone’s here to listen to the music, right? Just play it, CARION, because you do so beautifully!
But video is their thing, and they’ve won prizes for it, so what do I know? It was mainly the jumps in the first few minutes that were making me cranky. I don’t care so much about the panning, but after a while it does start to get a little silly. Panning is a technique, not a prop. It should be used as such and not diluted.
Anyway, here’s their website, if you’d like more of the same.
Oh yeah, and happy birthday, Carl Nielsen!
Leave a Reply