As we approach the shortest day, it’s all the more important to keep looking on the bright side.
Just ask German-Danish composer Friedrich Kuhlau. At the age of seven, Kuhlau lost an eye when he slipped on the ice and fell on a bottle. In 1810, he fled to Copenhagen to avoid conscription into Napoleon’s army. There, he struggled to gain acceptance into Danish musical life. It was a bumpy ride, marked by modest success and spectacular failure.
Then, only a few years after he scored his greatest hit, in 1828, with incidental music to the play “Elverhøj” (“The Elf’s Hill”), his house caught fire. He was forced to spend most of the night out in the freezing cold, as a result of which he developed a chest ailment that drove him to an untimely death at the age of 46.
Happily, his ill-fortune is nowhere in evidence in his flute quintets. We’ll hear one of them on this week’s “Music from Marlboro.” The Flute Quintet in D major, Op. 51, No. 1, will be performed by flutist Julia Bogorad, violinist Ralph Evans, violists Ira Weller and Samuel Rhodes, and cellist Marcy Rosen, at the 1979 Marlboro Music Festival.
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 (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.
We’ll enjoy a recording made at Marlboro in 1971, with flutist Paula Robison, oboist Joseph Turner, clarinetist Larry Combs, bassoonist William Winstead, and hornist Robin Graham.
Lighten up with an hour of Danish quintets, on the next “Music from Marlboro,” this Wednesday evening at 6:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page
PHOTOS: Tak for kaffe, with cheese Danish: the young Carl Nielsen
