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Tag: Carl Nielsen

Nielsen’s Inextinguishable Symphony Premiere

It was on this date 100 years ago that an audience at the Copenhagen Musical Society was treated to the unusual experience of dueling kettle drums positioned at opposite sides of an orchestra. Carl Nielsen’s Symphony No. 4, “The Inextinguishable,” was given its premiere under the direction of its creator.

Nielsen himself was responsible for the symphony’s nickname. Written against the backdrop of the First World War, the composer wished to express “the elemental will to live.” In the forward of the published score, he states, “Music is Life, and, like it, Inextinguishable.”

At the climax of the piece, the thrilling clash of timpani gives way to a euphoric proclamation by the brass. Over strife and turmoil rises that which will endure. Nielsen, the eternal optimist, manages to convey that which is optimistically eternal.

February 1, 2016
Carl Nielsen Celebrates 150 Years

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

June 9, 2015
Princeton Symphony & Sinfonietta Nova Celebrate Nordic Music

Now that moderate temperatures and Daylight Saving Time have lulled us into a sense of security, it’s okay for local symphony orchestras to trot out the Nordic composers.

On Saturday, Sinfonietta Nova will present music by the great Danes, Carl Nielsen and Niels Wilhelm Gade (on a concert which will also include works by Pablo de Sarasate and William Boyce), and on Sunday, the Princeton Symphony Orchestra will perform music by Jean Sibelius (on a concert which will also include works by Robert Schumann, Jules Massenet and Sebastian Currier).

Sinfonietta Nova will appear at the Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in Princeton Junction (Saturday at 7:30 p.m.); the Princeton Symphony will perform at Princeton University’s Richardson Auditorium (Sunday at 4 p.m.).

Put on your Bermuda shorts and read all about it in my article in today’s Trenton Times:

http://www.nj.com/times-entertainment/index.ssf/2015/03/classical_music_two_orchestras.html

PHOTOS: They scoff at your snow: Jean Sibelius (left) and Carl Nielsen

March 13, 2015
Carl Nielsen: An Underrated Genius?

Yesterday, I inadvertently committed a crime against Danish music by ignoring the birthday anniversary of Carl Nielsen. Far from being a simple Sibelius knock-off, Nielsen forged his own, immediately-recognizable style – which can’t always be said with as much conviction about a lot of other fin de siècle Scandinavian music. Not that I don’t love the stuff.

Leonard Bernstein believed Nielsen’s rightful place was as Sibelius’ equal.

“I think many people are in for pleasant surprises as they get to know Nielsen,” he said at a centennial celebration of the composer’s birth, “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.”

That was in 1965. Yet, fifty years on, with many more recordings and performances to choose from, Nielsen continues stubbornly to be an acquired taste.

What’s not to like? There’s struggle in the music and harmonic ambiguity – key relationships don’t always play out the way you expect they should (they don’t always in life, either, so why should they in music?) – there is conflict and violence, anxiety, but also great beauty and even humor. At its core and at the end of the journey, there is, for me, an optimism in much of Nielsen’s output, a love for life, a belief that there is indeed, as the subtitle of his Fourth Symphony professes, something inextinguishable in all of us, that I find inspiring.

A tip of the blond brush cut to Carl Nielsen. Happy belated birthday!

June 10, 2014

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