| Review by tintagel April 7, 2007 (8 of 9 found this review helpful)
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I have a fair number of Nielsen discs in my collection and love his music inordinately. Neeme Jarvi's disc of overtures etc has long been a favourite, but this has to be heard to be believed.
Quite frankly, I don't think I've ever heard any Nielsen quite so convincingly player or conducted, and that's saying a lot when you look at some of the outrageously good Symphony Cycles around (Blomstedt, Schonwandt, Thomson.....).
To put it simply, this disc is highly addictive. Helios is just glorious and the strange, bird-like calls in the Faroe Fantasy have surely never sounded quite like this. The full-throated horns in Pan and Syrinx are incredible. It isn't just a matter of zest or accurate playing (present in abundance...make no mistake there!), it's that demonic sense of a mission being undertaken that does it for me.
And that's just the performances on musical grounds. When you add in sound of spectacular weight, the glowing woodwind sounds, the bright and powerful brass and the wonderful bloom within a very nice acoustic the result moves onto a different plane again. The MC version is handled very beautifully. It strikes me that the use of the rear channels is subtle but still quite significant.
Game, set and match to the Danish NRSO and Dausgaard I would say. It just doesn't get any better than this!
Nick
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| Review by JJ May 28, 2007 (3 of 5 found this review helpful)
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Figure emblématique de la musique Danoise, Carl Nielsen (1865-1931) était issu d'une famille d'artisans sans le sou. Parvenant néanmoins à entrer au Conservatoire royal de Copenhague à l'âge de dix-neuf ans, il choisira le violon avant de parfaire sa culture et ses connaissances lors de voyages en Allemagne, en France et en Italie. Se tournant alors vers l'étude de la direction d'orchestre, Nielsen ne viendra que progressivement à la composition, assumant en parallèle la fonction de professeur au Conservatoire Royal en 1915. "Nielsen aura dominé la vie musicale danoise, y assumant avec un tout autre libéralisme, la succession du sévère Niels Gade. Il aura, en particulier, construit une œuvre parfaitement originale, en vive réaction au post-romantisme allemand dont le Danemark subissait alors l'influence", précise François-René Tranchefort. Auteur, notamment, de six symphonies, de trois concertos, des opéras Saul et David et Maskarade, Carl Nielsen composa aussi pour la scène et pour l'orchestre. Le Super Audio CD qui nous occupe ici, regroupe des œuvres orchestrales rarement jouées, d'une belle invention mélodique comme la suite pour orchestre "Sinefrid" ou "l'ouverture rhapsodique" datant de 1927. Dirigeant le Danish National Symphony Orchestra avec une verve indéniable, mettant ainsi en lumière la richesse d'une orchestration toujours en mouvement, Thomas Dausgaard rend un vibrant hommage au compositeur danois et nous offre un de ses plus grands enregistrements de musique pour orchestre.
Jean-Jacques Millo
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| Review by jlaurson October 10, 2007 (3 of 5 found this review helpful)
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Hans Abrahamsen. Jørgen and Niels Viggo Bentzon. Håkon Børresen. August Enna. Niels Wilhelm Gade. Louis Glass. Bo Holten. Paul von Klenau. Herman D. Koppel & Sons. Ludolf Nielsen. Per Nørgård. Knudåge Riisager. Poul Ruders. Some of the many Danish composers that are anywhere between largely and completely unknown. When we think of Scandinavian music, the Finn Jean Sibelius and the Norwegian Edvard Grieg (whose death’s 100th anniversary we celebrate this year) come to mind. Swedish composers are also largely unknown. Too few are familiar with the delightful works of Hugo Alfvén, Kurt Atterberg, Joseph Martin Kraus, Wilhelm Peterson-Berger, Allan Pettersson, Ture Rangström, Wilhelm Stenhammar, or Eduard Tubin.
The first Danish composer that comes to mind – completing the Scandinavian Triumvirate with Sibelius and Grieg – is Carl Nielsen. Follwing Nielsen you’ll find – eventually – Vagn Holmboe and Rued Langgaard. You’ll be hard pressed to ever find Leif Kayser – but if and when you do, you might like to thank the Danish record label DACAPO that you did.
There’s a richness and variety to Danish music that belies the obscurity of its composers or the size of the country with a population of just over 5 million. A quick stop at Carl Nielsen (1865 - 1931) who is famous enough not to need an introduction. If you like Sibelius – and the symphonic form as such – Nielsen is mandatory. Osmo Vänskä’s BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra recordings on BIS are fine, but Herbert Blomstedt’s LA recordings on Decca are still the likely first choice. (If you have Neeme Järvi’s cycle on DG, or Berglund’s on RCA, or Schonwandt’s on DACAPO, you are not off badly, either.) No matter how many Nielsen Symphonies you have, you must listen to what Morton Gould and Jean Martinon do with the 2nd and 4th Symphony, respectively. And if you have no Nielsen at all, do start with this, finally re-issued, budget RCA disc.
All the concertos can be had conveniently on Blomstedt’s Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra EMI two disc set. But the most important of them, the aggressive clarinet concerto, you might want to sample with Martin Fröst and Osmo Vänskä on BIS, while the Violin Concerto is well coupled with Sibelius and executed by the very the able hands of Cho-Liang Lin and Esa-Pekka Salonen (Sony).
What brought Carl Nielsen to my ears most recently was a hybrid SACD by DACAPO with Thomas Dausgaard conducting Nielsen’s orchestral music. For now this sounds like the definitive contribution to the Snefried Suite, the overtures (to Maskarade, “Saul og David”, and the “Rhapsodisk” and Helios Overtures) as well as some smaller, lesser known works. Terrific in sound and playing, this is what the Nielsen lover wants in his stockings this year.
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| Review by tubadanm November 2, 2008 (4 of 6 found this review helpful)
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| The opening two tracks on this CD will blow you away. The orchestra is full of life and the music really moves. The brass are strong and present and really pull their own weight. Beyond the first two tracks requires a few auditions, especially with the volume turned up some because it gets really really quiet in some sections. In any case, this is a great collections of rarely heard music of Nielsen and very well performed.
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| Review by lenw October 26, 2010 (3 of 9 found this review helpful)
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| Compared to the Nielsen: Symphony No. 5 on Telarc (SACD-60615) I found it mostly lacking emotionally, the overall sound quality thin at the top and too much bloom at the bottom end. The SACD didn't have the fullness and ease of the better SACD's I've heard on my system. The distance perspective sounds orchestra rear, and although it's recorded a bit hot the recording does have very good dynamics and imaging. The Dacapp-recordings website offers a 24-bit 96KHz download but it sounds closer to an RBCD than a SACD recording to me.
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