Johnny Griffin - The Man I Love

“Critic Ralph J. Gleason made an oft-quoted remark about Johnny Griffin during the course of a 1958 ‘Down Beat’ record review. To avoid any misunderstandings this is Gleason’s paragraph, in full: ‘Unquestionably Johnny Griffin can play the tenor saxophone faster, literally, than anyone alive. At least he can claim this until it’s demonstrated otherwise. And in the course of playing with this incredible speed, he also manages to blow longer without refueling than you would ordinarily consider possible. With this equipment he is able to play almost all there could possibly be played in any given chorus.’

“As far as it goes Gleeson’s words are probably correct. (In the absence of a jazz section to the Guinness Book of Records we must assume Griffin’s leading position in the field of runners in the Semi-Quaver Race.) But it would be wrong to assume that John Arnold Griffin III was nothing more than a note-producing machine fitted with a control graduated from ‘Finished with Engines’ up to ‘Full Speed Ahead’. He is an amazingly consistent soloist, a man who is never off from by all accounts; undeniably he likes fast tempos but is a complete, rounded jazz musician, capable of tackling any material with the aid (or something otherwise!) of any rhythm section. Since he came to Europe in 1962, at the age of 34, he has been giving free lessons on the gentle arts of relaxation, saxophone technique, deep-seated emotional intensity and a host of other important elements to thousands of listeners in Paris, London, Copenhagen and other centres where jazz is appreciated.

“When John left the United States he seemed already to have achieved more than many jazzmen achieve in a lifetime. He was 16 when he joined Lionel Hampton’s band as an alto saxophonist. (At least Griffin thought he had been booked to play alto in the reed section. On his first date with the band he took out the smaller horn only to be asked the whereabouts of his tenor. He dashed back home to Chicago at the earliest opportunity laid hands on a tenor and rejoined Hamp’s reed section which contained such stalwarts as Arnett Cobb, Bobby Plater and Charlie Fowlkes.) When Joe Morris, one of Hamp’s trumpeters, left to form his own band in 1947 John went with him and stayed with Morris for three years. (Morris’s lively little rhythm-and-blues band had a rhythm section comprising Elmo Hope, Percy Heath and Philly Joe Jones for a time.)

“Apart from a handful of relatively short engagements with other bands (Arnett Cobb’s unit in 1951, Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers from March to October 1957 and the Thelonious Monk Quartet during the summer of 1958) Griffin has been a solo artist or band leader since leaving the Joe Morris band. When I spoke to him during one of his bookings at the Ronnie Scott Club during the late sixties he seemed content to be touring the European jazz centres, secure in the knowledge that he would find a suitable rhythm section for his engagements. (He also spoke of the Johnny Morris band with pride, listed the names of the men who had passed through its ranks and gave me the news that Morris had died a few years earlier.) But I suspect that his appearances at the Montmartre Jazzhuis in Copenhagen during 1967 must have given him particular pleasure. The rhythm section contained two other expatriate Americans, friends of Johnny who had worked and recorded with him back home. Pianist Kenny Drew, a direct contemporary of Griffin, came to Europe from New York City in 1962 while Al Heath brother of bass player Percy and saxophonist Jimmy, lived in Europe between 1965 and 1968. The bass player, Nils Henning Ørsted-Pedersen, is of course the world-class Danish jazzman who has worked with every visiting American and was a member of the Oscar Peterson Trio for a time.

“The LP contains music which is wholly typical of a Johnny Griffin set, rich in blues either actual (such as ‘Blues for Harvey’) or as an overlying mood (Duke’s lovely ‘Sophisticated Lady’, painted here in varying shades of azure). Despite the different instruments Griffin’s most obvious influence must be Charlie Parker and if one plays parts of the LP at the incorrect speed of 45rpm the Parker Quality is perhaps more noticeable. (The speed change shifts the tenor up into the alto saxophone register.) Listen to the manner in which Griffin even when those phrases consist a flurry of notes you will observe the Parker-like rhythmic approach. ‘I like to play fast. I get excited. When the rhythm section gets cooking I want to explode,’ Griffin once told an interviewer. He was too modest to even hint that his own playing, in turn, was the cause of many rhythm sections cooking as they have never cooked before. The threesome heard here have proved their worth in other contexts but the presence of Griffin ‘The Infallible’ must have acted as a spur and when Al Heath sets the ball rolling with a crisp drum solo right at the beginning of ‘The Man I Love’ the atmosphere seems to be charged with a special electricity which affects all four men. Back in the early sixties Johnny helped to spark off just such a feeling night after night when he co-led a quintet with that other great tenor saxophone individualist, Eddie Davis.

“But the music is not made up simply of break-neck races over chordal assault courses. On ‘Hush-a-Bye’ the Griffin tenor is positively Hawkins-like in places, full of rich-toned authority but edged with a mellowness which is as welcome here as it is on the beautiful ‘Sophisticated Lady’. Johnny is careful to ensure that his fellow musicians are given solo space and inevitably it is the resourceful Kenny Drew who makes a big impression with his wonderfully swinging two-handed piano playing.

“The set closes with ‘Wee’, the Denzil Best tune which Griffin has been using as a theme for some time. The number started life under the title ‘Allen’s Alley’ when it was a part of a Coleman Hawkins record date on which Allen Eager was featured.” (Alun Morgan. From the liner notes.)

Performers: Johnny Griffin (t-sx), Kenny Drew (pi), Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen (bs), Albert Heath (dr)

1. The Man I Love

2. Hush-A-Bye

3. Blues For Harvey

4. The Masquerade Is Over

5. Sophisticated Lady

6. Wee

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Dexter Gordon & Slide Hampton - A Day in Copenhagen

"In immediate succession MPS-Records is issueing two albums by two great tenor saxophonists: Lucky Thompson ('A Lucky Song-book in Europe', MPS 15231) and Dexter Gordon. These two belong so much together but are at the same time in such contrast to each other as - a generation before them - Ben Webster and Don Byas (who encounter 'Webster Meets Byas' is documented on MPS 15159 ST).

"In 1962 Dexter Gordon who, after his famous recordings made at the beginning of the fifties, lived more or less obscurely and without much attention paid to in Los Angeles, had a brilliant come-back with his Blue Note album 'Go!'. Since that time numerous Dexter Gordon records were produced both in the USA and Europe - nearly all in quartet or quintet format in order to attain the success of 'Go!' or even to surpass it.

"The 'new thing' of this 1969 MPS record is the face that here Dexter is presented for the first time in an arranged frame for three horns, drafted by Slide Hampton. This collaboration between arranger/trombonist Slide Hampton and Dexter Gordon became possible since Slide's arrival in Europe last year. He and Dexter often played together with great inspiration and enthusiasm and often expressed the wish to make a record together.

"Dexter Gordon who played in the bands of Lionel Hampton and Louis Armstrong, made his first successful record with the Bill Eckstine Big Band in 1945: the famous 'Blowing the Blues Away'. His breakthrough however came with a range of tenor-battles with Wardell Gray, who in 1955 was found dead in the desert near Las Vegas. How important Gordon's influence was became clear at the end of the fifties when - having been nearly forgotten by the great mass of Jazz fans - pioneering musicians such as Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane mentioned him as their special 'inspiration'.

"In 1963 Dexter came to Europe travelling through many European countries until finding a real home in Copenhagen. When last year - after some bad experiences the great tenorist had in Paris - the Danish authorities refused to give him a license card hundreds of young people marched on Copenhagen's Radhus-Plads demonstrating: 'We want Dexter! We want Dexter!'

"This happened about the same time when Slide Hampton came to Europe. Slide belongs to a younger generation than Dexter. In the mid-fifties he became known for his playing with Buddy Johnson and Lionel Hampton, but his breakthrough came through both his trombone-playing and his arrangements for Maynard Ferguson's 1957/59 orchestra. His most famous piece at this time was his well known 'Fugue' - perhaps the most swinging of all the Jazz fugues (the author of these notes is using it for nearly 10 years as theme-song for the SWF-Jazz-Sessions, the Jazz concert series of the Southwestern German Radio and TV Network). How brilliantly Slide can score for medium-sized bands is fully demonstrated on the records he made under his own name for RCA-Victor and Atlantic. There are recordings with an octet having the power and richness in sound of a big band (e.g. the successful 'Sister Salvation').

"Slide wrote all the arrangements for our record - with the exception of Dexter's improvised quartet contribution 'The Shadow of Your Smile'. He also composed three of the selections. A typical example for the rich sounds Slide knows to get from only three horns is 'A Day in Vienna', dedicated to the Jazz-Workshop of the Austrian Radio Network in Vienna.

"'A New Thing' is - judged by the stylistic standards many listeners may associate with the terms 'New Thing' - a complete 'Old Thing'. 'I only called it 'New Thing' because it was the newest I had written for the date with Dex' (says Slide). And it was this new-old 'New Thing' the musicians liked best when making the record.

"'My Blues' was Slide's first composition after coming to Europe in 1966; he says: 'It gave us a chance to get away from the complex chord patterns of some of the other music on the date'.

"Let's also hear what Slide himself has to say about 'What's New': 'I remember this song from many great artists, but most of all from Clifford Brown with Strings. I knew all the cats were hip to this one... it is written in a 12/8 rhythm...'

"'You Don't Know What Love Is' finall is - as every interpretation of this beautiful melody - a tribute to Billie Holiday. Slide Hampton: 'When playing this we all thought about Billie and her great album 'Lady in Satin' and also about a later recording by Miles Davis. I changed the tempo but tried to keep the same beautiful melodic and harmonic concept that Billie and Miles used.'

"The third horn on our album is Jamaica-born Dizzy Reece who sincce 1948 has been living in Europe - apart from a short American interlude - alternately in England, Germany, France and Holland, a trumpeter having been praised by such critical colleagues as Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie.

"And last not least as rhythm section we decided on the Kenny Drew Trio, to whom Dexter Gordon is since long especially accustomed from playing with at Copenhagen's 'Jazz-Hus Montmartre': Kenny Drew on piano and Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen on bass and guest drummer Art Taylor from Paris." (Joachim E. Berendt, tr. Wolf-Dieter Wagner. From the liner notes.)

Performers: Dexter Gordon (t-sx), Slide Hampton (tb), Dizzy Reece (tp), Kenny Drew (pi), Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen (bs), Art Taylor (dr)

A1. My Blues

A2. You Don't Know What Love Is

A3. A New Thing

B1. What's New

B2. The Shadow Of Your Smile

B3. A Day In Vienna

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Scandinavian Choir Music

"The Norwegian Trond Kverno studied sacred music, musical theory and choral conducting. He is a professional organist, teaches at the Oslo Conservatoire and made a name in his country in the field of religious vocal music. He was from 1976 to 1978 member of the liturgical commision, with the task of improving the liturgical handbooks of the Church of Norway. The hymn 'Ave Maris Stella' is structured into different parts. The six-part writing is distributed, in particular at the beginning and at the end of the piece, into a three-part female choir and a three-part corresponding male choir.

"Since the end of the eighties, the Estonian composer Urmas Sisask has devoted himself particularly to sacred music. His 'Benedicto' (1991) is a piece that combines in an attractive way several different styles: medieval polyphony (monastic organa), jazz rhythms or repeated passages in the style of litanies. The piece, which offers many unexpected turns, is a joyful setting of the liturgical text.

"After his studies, Knut Nystedt was for a long time organist and teacher of choral conducting in his native tonw, Oslo. From 1950 to 1990, he toured in the whole world with his choir 'The Norwegian Soloists'. As a composer, he was awarded many prizes. The three settings of the Bible, 'Three Motets', belong to his great œuvre for choir. Choral music fascinates him more and more. He says about himself '[...] It is vocal music that interests [me] increasingly: the human voice has extraordinary possibilities, and a range of expression richer than what has been used until now in choral practice. I therefore immersed myself in a new world of choral sound, as it were a sort of kaleidoscope, in order to discover radically new tone colours.' After 'Thus saith the Lord', a piece of austere, seemingly archaic writing, comes a well-known piece, 'Peace, I leave with you'. The beginning of this piece, a unison in the low range of the women's voices, sung pianissimo, grabs the attention immediately. The tension is sustained all through the piece. 'I will praise thee, O Lord' concludes with élan this short cycle of motets.

"The Estonian Veljo Tormis made his debut in the musical world at the time of the annexing of Estonia by the Soviet Union. Estonians and other ethnic groups, and their languages, were then banned. Tormis bases his compositions on poetical texts of high value, as a manifesto against the Soviet domination of his mother tongue. He takes a keen interest in the Baltico-Finnish tradition. After the closing by the Soviets of the organ class of the Conservatoire, judge too near to the church, Tormis, then a student of the class, changed his orientation and studied choral conducting. During his studies, he was very interested in the national styles that base themselves on folk music. His compositional technique, modern and anti-romantic, leans on these studies and is at the saem times influenced by the music of Carl Orff and Zoltán Kodály. Tormis's choral works were created in collaboration with the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, his close partner for many years. His Finnish choral cycle 'Sügismaastikud' is a setting of seven poems. Each poem is given a particular, extrovert colour. The voices are treated in a very instrumental way, using extended tessituras. Long sustained chords recall organ music. Towards the end of the cycle, a broad orchestral style of writing becomes apparent.

"The Swede Wilhelm Eugen Stenhammar was composer, pianist and conductor of the Göteborg Symphonic Orchestra. He wrote mostly instrumental music. After initial sutdies in Stockholm, he went to Berlin to deepen his knowledge. He was an ardent admirer of Richard Wagner and Anton Bruckner. Later in life, the Nordic style of Carl Nielsen and Jean Sibelius fascinated him. His 'Tre körvisor' (1890) evoke with romantic harmonies but without any trace of kitsch, the poetical images of J.P. Jacobsen. 'September' and 'I Seraillets Have' are charming pictures of nature and peace. 'Havde jeg, o havde jeg en Dattersøn, o ja!' shows itself mischievously ironical.

"'Kung Liljekonvalje' (G. Fröding) and 'Förvårskväll' (R. Jändel) by David Wikander are very popular pieces of the Swedish choral repertoire. The love of detail that the texts betray - a characteristic of Swedish literature and mentality - finds in Wikander's music an adequate rendering.

"Niels V. Gade is the found of the Danish national romantic style. Robert Schumann and Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, with whom Gade studied (Mendelssohn Bartholdy even created his First Symphony in Liepzig), were friends and fervent defenders of his music. In 'Morgensang', in C major, Gade develops from passages in unison and in thirds soft but heroic harmonies, characterized by boradly spaced male voices, generally in four parts.

"The Swede Hugo Alfvén still enjoys great popularity in his country and abroad through a handful of his works, in particular his 'Aftonen'. His pieces are typical representatives of a Swedish national romantic music. 'Aftonen', with its impressionistic writing, is an excellent example of his lyrical Nordic style.

"Edvard Grieg, the most famous of Norwegian composers, wrote only a few choral works on sacred texts. His 'Fire Salmer' (Four Psalms, 1906), more precisely the psalm entitled 'Hvad est du dog skjön', are his last work, he died in 1907.

"The text is a paraphrase by Hans Adolf Brorson (18th century) of the Song of Salomon, with reminiscences of the Song of Songs. The introduction is followed by three nearly identical verses with solo baritone (soloist of the choir: Thomas Walter). The fourth verse breaks this pattern. The theme is harmonically taken apart and the text is passed back and forth between the different voices, like the whisperings of lovers. The piece ends in this quiet atmosphere.

"The cosmopolitan Einojuhani Rautavaara studied in Finland, Vienna the U.S.A., Switzerland and Cologne. He has since returned to live in his home town, Helsinki. In 'Sommarmatten' (1975), soprano solos are added to the mixed four-part choir (soloists of the choir: Silke Brucker, Marianne Dreßler, Angela Fadle and Christiane Kuhlberg-Ross). The silvery high tones of the soloists evoke the vesperal reminiscence, filled with vibrating heat, of a summer day. To this quick movement, Rautavaara opposes slow harmonies, without thirds, like archaic sculptures. The wide tessituras, using the lowest basses and the highest sopranos, create a most attractive sound picture. One understands here why Rautavaara is often described as a mystic." (Dagmar Ungerer-Brams. From the liner notes.)

Performers: Amadeus-Chor, Nicol Matt

1. Trond Kverno - Ave Maris Stella

2. Urmas Sisask - Benedictio

3. Knut Nystedt - Three Motets: Thus Saith The Lord

4. Knut Nystedt - Three Motets: Peace, I Leave With You

5. Knut Nystedt - Three Motets: I Will Praise Thee, O Lord

6. Veljo Tormis - Sügismaastikud: On Hilissuvi

7. Veljo Tormis - Sügismaastikud: Üle Taeva Jooksevad Pilved

8. Veljo Tormis - Sügismaastikud: Valusalt Punased Lehed

9. Veljo Tormis - Sügismaastikud: Kahvatu Valgus

10. Veljo Tormis - Sügismaastikud: Tuul Könnumaa Kohal

11. Veljo Tormis - Sügismaastikud: Külm Sügisö

12. Veljo Tormis - Sügismaastikud: Kanarbik

13. Wilhelm Stenhammar - Tre Körvisor: September

14. Wilhelm Stenhammar - Tre Körvisor: I Seraillets Have

15. Wilhelm Stenhammar - Tre Körvisor: Havde Jeg, O Havde Jeg En Dattersøn, O Ja!

16. David Wikander - Förvårskväll

17. Niels Gade - Morgensang

18. David Wikander - Kung Liljekonvalje

19. Hugo Alfvén - Aftonen

20. Edvard Grieg - Hvad Est Du Dog Skjön

21. Einojuhani Rautavaara - Sommarnatten

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Johan Svendsen; Carl Nielsen - String Octet; Romance; String Quintet

"Johan Svendsen was born in Christiana (now Oslo) on 30 September 1840, and died in Copenhagen on 14 June 1911. At an early age he acquired a working knowledge of a variety of instruments from his father, who was a military musician, and he began his career as a clarinettist in a regimental band. His principal instrument, however, was the violin, and as a young man he played in the orchestra of Norske Theater (of which Ibsen was Director) and his first experience of the symphonic repertory, and of Beethoven in particular, was as a violinist in the subscription concerts organised in 1857-9 by Halfdan Kjerulf and Gottfried Conradi. His formal musical education did not begin until 1863, when, with the aid of a stipend granted to him by the King of Sweden and Norway, he entered the Conservatoire in Leipzig (he was offered a place in an advanced class, but asked to start at the beginning of the course because he considered his musical education to be rudimentary). He studied the violin with Mendelssohn's old friend and colleague Ferdinand David, but within a year had decided to concentrate on composition and conducting. He successfully pursued a career in both capacities (together, initially, with that of a solo and orchestral violinist), and this naturally meant that was away from his native Norway for much of the time. In 1872 he returned to Christiana as joint conductor, with his compatriot and close contemporary Grieg, of the Musikforening concerts, becoming sole conductor two years later. In 1883 he was appointed Musical Director of the Royal Opera in Copenhagen, and retained the position until ill-health forced him to retire in 1908.

"Svendsen's most important compositions, which include two symphonies, two concertos (for violin and for cello), four Norwegian Rhapsodies for orchestra, vocal and chamber music, were written before 1880. The Octet in A major, Op. 3 for strings (four violins, two violas and two cellos), like the String Quartet in A minor, Op. 1 and the String Quintet in C, Op. 5, dates from his last years at the Leipzig Conservatoire. It was performed there for the first time in 1866, and won him the Conservatoire's First Prize; it also prompted an offer from the great Leipzig publishing house of Breitkopf & Härtel, who issued it a year later, with a dedication, 'in deepest gratitude and respect', to Her Majesty Louise, Queen of Sweden and Norway. In May 1868, when Svendsen went to the musical festival in Weimar and met Liszt, the Octet was performed by a group of Germany's foremost string players.

"The industrious and fluent Louis Spohr composed four double quartets between 1823 and 1847, but these are, as their titles imply, octets for two string quartets, with the accent as much, if not more, on antiphonal effects between the two groups, as on treatment of the eight instruments as a homogeneous ensemble. For the classic example of a true string octet, one has to turn to the one in E-flat, Op. 20, that Mendelssohn wrote in 1825 at the age of sixteen; and probably the only nineteenth-century parallel to this, even if it does not match the sheer genius of Mendelssohn's youthful masterpiece, is Svendsen's Op. 3. Both main themes of its first movement incorporate prominent dotted rhythms, and these are to prove a recurring feature throughout the work. The emphatic first subject is announced boldly by all eight instruments in octaves and re-stated in two contrasting ways before a sustained chromatic transition prepares the way for the short second subject in (in E), gently introduced by first violin and first viola in turn. The compact development is mainly concerned with the first two bars of the first subject, but later the second subject enters the discussion; further development takes place during the course of the recapitulation, which is appreciably longer than the exposition and development section combined. The inventive and rhythmically intriguing second movement (in E) has something of the spirit of a scherzo, but is formally more like a loose-limbed rondo. The 'scherzo' element is provided by the chattering triplets of the opening, the 'trio' element by the short, lyrical theme (with a dotted rhythm in its second bar) initiated by the first viola at bar 4I but subsequently expanded almost beyond recognition. The slow movement (in C) can perhaps be best described as a set of free, continuous variations, with considerable fluctuation of mood and tempo, on the theme as presented at the outset by the first violin. But there is an impassioned subsidiary theme that recalls the 'trio' theme of the third movement, and a second 'variation' theme, first played by the first cello to a descant on the first violin in running semiquavers. A slow introduction, bristling with dotted rhythms, prefaces the sonata-form 'Finale', whose angular main theme it foreshadows; a lyrical, curving second subject, of by now familiar outline, is presented by the first viola and provides most of the material for the development, which is separated from the recapitulation by a virtuoso semiquaver passage in octaves.

"The Romance for violin, probably Svendsen's best known work, was composed in Christiana in 1880, soon after his return from an extended foreign tour that took him to Leipzig, Rome, London (where he met the legendary Spanish violinist, Pablo de Saraste) and Paris. It was originally scored for solo violin, with an orchestra of strings, flute, oboe, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns and timpani, but here the accompaniment is arranged for strings. The main tempo is 'Andante', but there is a quicker central section in G minor.

"Carl Nielsen was born at Nørre Lyndelse (near Odense) in Denmark on 9 June 1865, and died in Copenhagen on 2 October 1931. Like Svendsen, he came from a modest background; his father taught him to play the violin and the cornet, he gained his first practical musical experience from playing in a local orchestra and in a military band, and he was enabled to study at the Royal Danish Conservatoire in Copenhagen (from 1884 to 1886) as a result of financial assistance from benefactors in Odense. But although he continued for some years to play the violin professionally (he was a member of the orchestra of the Royal Opera in Copenhagen under Svendsen, who was not only an influence on the young composer but an ardent admirer, and who conducted the first performance of Nielsen's first Symphony in 1894) and was a competent conductor, he never attained Svendsen's eminence in that field, whereas he quickly outstripped him as a composer. Not only did he become, with six symphonies to his credit, Denmark's greatest symphonist, but he was also a noted composer of music for the theatre, wrote three important concertos (for violin, flute and clarinet), choral music and songs, piano music and a considerable body of chamber music which includes three sonatas for violin and piano, six string quartets (the first two of them student works), a string quintet and a wind quintet.

"The String Quintet in G major (for the combination of two violins, two violas and cello, favoured by Mozart, Brahms and Dvořák, but not Schubert) was written in 1888, the same year as the first of Nielsen's four mature quartets (in G minor, Op. 13), and first performed on 28 April 1889. The score was dedicated to Thorvald Nielsen, Erlin Bloch, Hans Kassow and Louis Jensen, but not published until 1937, six years after the composer's death. The first movement, in fairly regular sonata form, is in a lilting 9/8 metre, but with occasional deft changes in rhythm (to 12/8 and, effectively, 3/4), which add to the music's piquancy and charm. There are three main thematic groups: the melodious theme introduced at the very beginning by the first violin; the airy transition initiated by the first viola, engendering a whole succession of oscillating semiquaver patterns; and the long-breathed theme on the first violin (on the first viola and the cello in octaves after the recapitulation) that emerges from it. The slow movement (in B-flat) is in ternary form, with the outer sections centred round a solemn theme intoned, after a chromatic introductory passage, by the first viola and the cello (on the two violins in octaves in the much shortened reprise). The middle section, in slightly quicker tempo, introduces a chorale-like theme on the first viola, this is then treated, in varying forms, rather as a 'cantus firmus' in different instrumental settings. The colourful third movement, alternately dancing and langorous, is permeated by quick, repeated-note 'ostinati'; a somewhat bucolic middle section (or trio) is followed by a literal repear of the first section, followed by a coda. The quintet ends with an exuberant sonata-form 'Finale', with an emphatic first subject and a playful second subject (on the first violin), which provides most of the material for the development section; there is a coda marked 'Presto'." (Robin Golding, 1994. From the liner notes.)

Performers: Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields Chamber Ensemble

1. Johan Svendsen - String Octet In A Major, Op. 3: I. Allegro Risoluto Ben Marcato

2. Johan Svendsen - String Octet In A Major, Op. 3: II. Allegro Scherzoso - Lento - Piu Mosso, Quasi Presto

3. Johan Svendsen - String Octet In A Major, Op. 3: III. Andante Sostenuto

4. Johan Svendsen - String Octet In A Major, Op. 3: IV Finale. Moderato - Allegro Assai Con Fuoco

5. Johan Svendsen - Romance, Op. 26

6. Carl Nielsen - String Quintet In G Major: I. Allegro Pastorale

7. Carl Nielsen - String Quintet In G Major: II. Adagio

8. Carl Nielsen - String Quintet In G Major: III. Andante Scherzando

9. Carl Nielsen - String Quintet In G Major: IV. Finale. Allegro Molto - Presto

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Jackie McLean & Dexter Gordon - The Source, Vol. 2

"This keenly-awaited sequel to 'The Meeting' could well have been subtitled 'Back to Bebop'. For bop, the intricate and beautiful music that burst on a surprised world 30 years ago, is indeed 'The Source' that gives the present LP its title.

"Jackie McLean and Dexter Gordon were closely identified with those sensational sounds that ushered in a whole new musical lifestyle. As a very young man Jackie was casually but significantly tutored by the late Bud Powell. A few years on and he was running around with Charlie Parker, digging the master, listening, learning, getting it together. Bird saw the promise in him, so did Miles Davis. He was on his way.

"Dexter Gordon, meanwhile, had to be regarded as Mr. Saxophone by all the hip tenor cats (not to mention contemporaries on alto, even baritone). Dexter's huge influence on musicians of that era has been well and truly put in perspective by Ira Gitler in 'Jazz Masters of the Forties'. Gordon was the man who was able to synthesize the truth preached by Lester Young, Charlie Parker and the Texas tenors into a cohesive and personal whole.

"Small wonder that Jackie writes on the jacket of 'The Meeting' (SteepleChase SCS-1005): 'He [Dexter] made me want to be a musician - I heard Bird after Dex.' Well, during two evenings at the Montmartre Jazzhus, Copenhagen, in July 1973, Jackie and Dexter, making their first records together, took a retrospective look at bebop and some of the compositions from those days that still inspired them. And in doing so they reaffirmed the validity and durability of that particular jazz style.

"Warning: This is not tired nostalgia, a friendly stroll down memory lane for the benefit of middle-aged dudes who are striving to recapture their youth. Jackie and Dexter have moved forward and onward. In the 1970s they are playing differently, with greater fire and invention than 20 years ago. That is as it should be. But the old lines from their youth continue to merit re-investigation.

"If you think about it, there is no earthly reason why 'Half Nelson' should be any less exciting as a blowing vehicle in 1973 than it was in 1942 when composer Miles Davis first recorded it (with Bird on tenor). 'Half Nelson' was based on Tadd Dameron's 'Ladybird'. McLean and Gordon follow what has become accepted tradition by going into the original theme after starting 'Half Nelson'. Dex og Jackie alternating on the breaks. Dexter obviously enjoys these good changes, from bottom to top, even finding time to give us a glimpse of the 'Mona Lisa'. They are to Jackie's liking, too, and Kenny Drew delineates a typically supple solo. Dig Niels-Henning - superb.

"Though 'I Can't Get Started' is a show tune from the 1930s, it became jazz property after Billy and Bunny had individually immortalised the song, and this melody continues to be a favourite with the boppers. Bird did it up a couple of time as only he could. Jackie and Dexter infuse the tune with that bittersweet flavour that spells e-m-o-t-i-o-n. Who said 'I Can't Get Started' was a trumpeters' property? He was wrong. Dexter's 'If You Could See Me Now' coda is a nice touch.

"We go back to 1947 again for a second Charlie Parker/Miles Davis collaboration, 'Another Hair-do' which the Bird supposedly recorded in Detroit on Christmas Day of that year. It's a blues, of course, and in this territory McLean and Gordon have few peers. Jackie makes several references to the little tag that Bird used to preface his set-closing 'Theme'. It's a long and highly-charged solo. When it comes to the quotation game Dexter is tops and in the course of his solo you will find snatches of 'Oop-bap-Sh'bam', his favourite 'And the Angels Sing', 'Santa Claus Is Coming to Town', 'Frankie and Johnny', etc.

"When Dexter first recorded 'Dexter Digs In', Niels-Henning was four months old. That was in 1946 and more than a quarter of a century later Mr. Gordon still sounds as fresh as a spring dawn. This extended 're-write' of the tenor saxophonist's original (which, incidentally, had Bud Powell and Max Roach in the supporting cast!) finds Jackie and Kenny, besides Dexter, digging in. There is some kinetic conversation between the saxes before the rideout. This riffy opus, by the way, inspired singer Eddie Jefferson to write a memorable set of lyrics which he recorded in 1969.

"Jackie's closing tribute says it all. Dexter was his source and their collective source was bebop. What Jackie doesn't mention is his own part in these proceedings. There can be no doubt tha on those nights at the Montmartre, Mr. McLean acted as a catalyst to the man who was his own original inspiration. It could only happen in jazz and to have the occasion preserved on two great albums makes it a treat we can savour over and over again." (Mark Gardner. From the liner notes.)

Performers: Jackie McLean (a-sx), Dexter Gordon (t-sx), Kenny Drew (pi), Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen (bs), Alex Riel (dr)

1. Half Nelson

2. I Can't Get Started

3. On The Trail

4. Closing

5. Another Hair-Do

6. Dexter Digs In

7. Closing

mp3/320kbps

Jackie McLean & Dexter Gordon - The Meeting, Vol. 1

"Jackie McLean with Dexter Gordon - what could be more natural? Two of the genuine heavyweights of post-war jazz, whose style stem from the same musical revolution. Men of huge talent with so much in common. Such an obvious partnership that nobody thought of it before - not even when they were both contract artists for Blue Note in the 1960s. Happily, the stars were in the right alignment when Jackie arrived in Copenhagen for an engagement at the Montmartre Jazzhaus during July of 1975. Dexter and Jackie were recorded together at last with a superb rhythm section, a responsive audience and under perfect conditions. 'The Meeting' is that first of two albums that capture the full flavour of those marvellous nights.

"As Jackie indicates in his note on this jacket, Dexter was an early and potent influence on the younger man's conception. When McLean was just a kid of 14 or 15 he used to hang around places where Dex played. At that time 52nd Street was still going full blast and Gordon was the big man on tenor. Sometimes Jackie would even get to sit in with 'Long Tall Dexter', and they jammed side by side at different places through the years.

"McLean's soaring, incisive alto and Gordon's lithe, powerful tenor here combine to give it you straight from the hip. These are players who have never compromised as artists. They play what they feel, what they believe in. They project deep emotions, scorn the superficial. Their stories are about love, hardships, good times, dues, fun, frustration, hope and hurt. There's often a raw edge to their messages but then music be something more than a sugar-coated pill to put you to sleep. 'Sunset' will move you; it isn't meant to be an anaesthetic which is all that so many people (pity them) want from music.

"The fire is lit between Jackie and Dexter from the first ensemble of Gordon's blues All Clean through Sahib Shihab's bright 'Rue de la Harpe', Kenny Drew's pastel shaded 'Sunset' to Ferdie Grufe's 'On the Trail'. The furnace in the rhythmic sense is kept masterfully stoked by Kenny Drew, Niels Henning og Alex Riel (who have worked as a trio, off and on, for eight or nine years).

"For those who may be unfamiliar with these five musicians (is that possible?) here are some brief words of biographical background:

"John Lenwood (Jackie) McLean was born in New York City on May 17, 1932. He started on saxophone at an early age and was greatly helped by pianist Bud Powell. He was first heard on record with Miles Davis in 1951. During the 1950s Jackie worked and recorded with George Wallington, Charles Mingus, Art Blakey and Donald Byrd among others. From 1959-61 he acted and played in Jack Galler's 'The Connection'. Since that time he has led his own groups, frequently toured Europe, played in Japan and taught at the Universy of Hartford. His development as a soloist, composer and leader can be traced on his albums for Prestige and Blue Note among others. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Jackie made no records. His very welcome return was signalled by his first SteepleChase LP, 'Live at Montmartre' (SCS-1001), taped in August 1972. He now makes an annual trip to Denmark to play the Montmartre and record for SteepleChase.

"Dexter Gordon (born Los Angeles, February 27, 1923) worked in the big bands of Louis Armstrong, Fletcher Henderson, Lionel Hampton and Billy Eckstine before branching out as a star small group soloist. Dexter cast a giant shadow over the tenor sax in the 1940s and such diverse musicians as John Coltrane, Stan Getz and Sonny Rollins all owed a stylistic debt to Gordon. His many recordings for Savoy, Dial, Bethlehem, Jazzland, Blue Note and Catfish are essential listening. Since moving to Europe in September 1962 Dexter has played all over the Continent, but he returns regularly to New York for festival dates and recording sessions. Gordon has been resident of Copenhagen, a city he loves, since the mid-1960s.

"Kenny Drew (born New York, August 28, 1928) has lived in Copenhagen since January 1964, having settled in Europe three years earlier. Kenny, on of the best pianists in the Bud Powell tradition, worked with Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Charlie Parker, Brew Moore and Buddy DeFranco in the early 1950s. Later he was with Art Blakey, Kenny Dorham and a host of other groups. Drew has played extensively with Dexter in Europe, but they have an association that goes back to their days in California around 1955-56 (Drew played on Dexter's Bethlehem LP 'Daddy Plays the Horn' and his Blue Notes 'Dexter Calling...' and 'One Flight Up'). Kenny has known Jackie since they were youngsters, too, and he was the pianist on McLean's Blue Note sides 'Blueswalk' and 'Jackie's Bag'. Drew can be heard as leader on 'Duo' (SteepleChase SCS-1002), 'Everything I Love' (SCS-1007) and the forthcoming 'Duo, Volume 2' (SCS-1010).

"Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen (born Osted, Denmark, May 27, 1946) is just about everyone's favourite bassists; he seems to get better and better. Having made his first records at the age of 15 (with Bud Powell), Niels-Henning has since been heard with a staggering array of American start from Albert Ayler to Dizzy Gillespie. In the last year or so he has gained great exposure with Oscar Peterson who features him prominently. With his wonderful sound and incredible technique, Niels-Henning emphasies that the electric bass is a redundant invention.

"Alex Riel (born September 13, 1940) is a considerable exciting drummer who was inspired to become a percussionist at the age of 15 by hearing Zutty Singleton's work on the Fats Waller recording of 'Moppin' and Boppin'. Like Niels-Henning, he has backed numerous Americans - Sahib Shihab, Brew Moore, Archie Shepp, Ben Webster, Paul Gonsalves, Kenny Dorham, Stuff Smith, Roland Kirk, Don Cherry, etc. He has recorded under his own name (with Drew and Niels-Henning) for Fona. He was on Jackie's 'Live at Montemartre' and will be heard on Ken McIntyre's forthcoming SteepleChase collection.

"I do not propose to describe in detail the music on these sides. Its high quality is readily apparent.  The brisk 'All Clean' is 17 minutes of pure unalloyed joy. Dexter is the first soloist and is followed by Jackie, Kenny, Niels-Henning (he gets into a remarkable groove). Then come the chorus exchanges between Jackie (always in the left channel) and Dex.

"Sahib Shihab's 'Rue de la Harpe' is a typical, robust hard bop line, the sort Jackie does so well. According to the composer: 'This is a very small street in the Latin Quarter in Paris.' Jackie really stretches here, Dexter holds sway as only he can, and Kenny creates the sort of nimble solo for which he is renowned.

"In 'Sunset' there are lengthy, feeling-filled, declarative statements by Jackie and Dexter, a mellifluous Drew passage and then back to the haunting theme. For a more intimate version of this melody hear Kenny playing it solo on his 'Everything I Love' record.

"Ferdie Grofe's 'On the Trail' has been a firm favourite with musicians since Jimmy Heath re-discovered the tune which has a definitive 'out West', loping feel to it. Jackie handles the theme, Dexter bursts forth, riding the range at a relentless canter. McLean's solo in this well known movement from Grofe's 'Grand Canyon Suite' bristles with fiery ferocity. Kenny digs into a swinging veing and his lines are positively mercurial.

"That's 'The Meeting' - a summit meeting of two jazz superstars. Are you ready for 'The Source'? Can you bear the suspense of waiting that long? Get set for 'Half Nelson', 'I Can't Get Started', 'Another Hair-do' and 'Dexter Digs In'! (Mark Gardner. From the liner notes.)

Performers: Jackie McLean (a-sx), Dexter Gordon (t-sx), Kenny Drew (pi), Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen (bs), Alex Riel (dr)

1. Introduction By Jackie Mclean

2. All Clean

3. Rue De La Harpe

4. Callin'

5. Sunset

6. On The Trail

mp3/320kbps

Carl Nielsen - Symphonies Nos. 4 & 5

"Despite being born in the same year, Nielsen and Sibelius, the twin peaks of Nordic symphonism, pursued wholly independent paths. Where Sibelius's First Symphony (1899, rev. 1900) took Borodin and Tchaikovsky as its starting point, Nielsen's (1891-94) paid homage to Berlioz, Grieg and Svendsen. And while Sibelius gradually stripped away elements of Romanticism and went ever deeper into elemental representations of Nature and movement, Nielsen accumulated, explored ever wider horizones, and rather than moving away from his roots made symphonic dramas from confronting them with new, often inimical forces.

"The Dane's Third Symphony (1911) celebrated a conglomeration of positive values - freedom, creative energy, oneness with Nature, and, in the finale, what Nielsen himself dubbed the 'healthy morale' of the ordinary working man - all under the umbrella title of 'Sinfonia espansiva'. At its core, his next symphony, 'The Inextinguishable' (1914-16) is a defence of those same values against elements that threaten their very existence. By the time of its composition, Europe was being torn apart by a war in which Denmark remained neutral but which caused Nielsen to question the 'national feeling' he had previously regarded as wholesome and which he now likened to a 'kind of spiritual syphilis'. There were conflicts, too, in his personal life. His marriage, to the prominent sculptress Ann-Marie Brodersen, was entireing a period of turmoil, brought about by the revelation of his infidelities; and on 30th May 1914 he resigned his position as assistant conductor at the Royal Opera in Copenhagen, thereby becoming a freelance musician for more or less the first time in over twenty years. For all these reasons Nielsen felt compelled to re-examine his values as a composer and human being, and in this respect 'The Inextinguishable' is a classic mid-life-crisis piece.

"On 3rd May 1914, Carl Nielsen wrote in a state of high agitation to his wife: 'I have an idea for a new work, which has no programme but which is meant to express what we understand by the life-urge or life-manifestation; that's to say: everything that moves, that craves life, that can be called neither good nor evil, neither high nor low, neither great nor small, but simply: 'That which is life' or 'That which craves life' - I mean, no definite idea about anything 'grandiose' or 'fine and delicate' or about warm or cold (powerful maybe) but simply Life and Movement, but varied, very varied, but holding together, and as though always flowing in one large movement, in a single stream. I need a word or a short title to say it all.'

"The word he was looking for was 'Inextinguishable'. But he was not to find it until he had completed the symphony nearly two years after that semi-coherent outburst of enthusiasm. His thoughts crystallised in a short preface to the score: 'With the title 'The Inextinguishable' the composer has sought to indicate in one word what only music has the power to express in full: 'The Elemental Will of Life'. Music -is- Life and, like it, inextinguishable.' And in 1920 Nielsen sent his Dutch composer-conductor friend Julius Röntgen an explanatory note that further clarified his intentions: 'If the whole world was destroyed, Nature would once again begin to beget new life and push forward with the strong and fine forces that are to be found in the very stuff of existence... These 'inextinguishable' forces are what I have tried to represent.'

"In Danish 'Det Uudslukkelige' is a neuter noun, non an adjectival description. So we should think of this not as a hubristic Inextinguishable Symphony, but rather as one whose subject matter is That which is Inextinguishable. Nielsen might almost as well have named it the Life Force, as Bernard Shaw put it, or 'élan vital', in a formulation popularised around the time of its composition by the philosopher Henri Bergson.

"The turbulence of the opening bars immediately suggests how much is at stake, as the strings and woodwin view with one another and brass and timpani strive to maintain law and order. When this tumult subsides, a long-drawn clarinet theme in winding Sibelian thirds seems to come from another world ('not quite like me', as once Nielsen remarked). Rather than remaining merely a haven for escapist reverie, this theme will prove highly adaptable, marking out its Darwinian fitness for eventual survival.

"In the pastoral-idyllic slow movement the woodwind behave as an idealised village band, charmingly not quite sure whether they should be playing two or three beats to the bar. Here, one senses, are the values of simplicity and openness the symphony needs to defend. The tensely dramatic third movement then begins with a passionate accompanied recitative for the violins, soaring over timpani and lower strings, 'like an eagle on the wind' according to the composer; succeeding contrasts between passionate declamation and hymn-like serenity are eventually swallowed up in a radiant climax. In the finale, launched by a torrent of string scales in the manner of Beethoven's third 'Leonora' Overture, the element of antagonism resurfaces. Two sets of timpani, spatially separated, battle it out with the rest of the orchestra, before the triumphant return of the first movement's Sibelian clarinet theme, no blazened across the entire orchestra in searing affirmation.

"After its enthusiastically received première on 1st February 1916, 'The Inextinguishable' rapidly established itself as a milestone in the Nordic symphonic repertoire, one that was frequently called upon to conduct. During these years he was living an itinerant life, hoping to re-cement his marriage but for the time being excluded from the family home in Copenhagen. In between major symphonic projects, much of his energy was devoted to a lavish staging of 'Aladdin', which demanded some 90 minutes of incidental music, and his representation of its polarities of Good and Evil, as well as its oriental setting, gave him new impetus for symphonic explorations (witness the music for 'The Market at Ispahan', which he composed for four discrete mini-orchestras in four different keys).

"For the 'Fifth Symphony' we have no preliminary statements of the kind Nielsen wrestly with apropos 'The Inextinguishable'. But he did reflect with hindsight on its content. Interviews for a Copenhagen newspaper just before the première on 24th January 1922, he was asked about the meaning of his new work. Using terms echoed by composers down the ages, he responded cagily: 'Long explanations and indications as to what music 'represents' are just evil; they distract the listener.' Pressed as to whether the Great War had affected his composition, he again deflected the question, replying that although he was not conscious of any such influence, 'One thing is certain: not one of us is the same as we were before the war. So maybe so!'

"As so many composers have discovered, these evasive tactics left the Fifth Symphony defenceless against critics eager to supply their own interpretations. Some related the extraordinarily vivid drama of the piece to his music for 'Aladdin', hearing pastoral dream-world and Arabian marches in the first movement of the symphony. And one of Nielsen's staunchest supporters found himself thoroughly repelled, calling the work a 'Sinfonie filmatique', this dirty trenches-music [...] this clenched first in the face of a defenceless, novelty snobbish, titillation-sick public [...] who lovingly lick the hand stained with the blood of their own noses!' Two years later in Stockholm, a large section of the audience walked out, in protest at the cacophony of the first movement, while a proportion of the remainder tried to hiss down the performance.

"Few among those early listeners could have guessed that Nielsen's Fifth Symphony would one day mark his posthumous international breakthrough - which can be dated quite precisely to the 1950 Edinburgh Festival - and go on to be hailed as one of the greatest symphonies of the twentieth century (not least by the celebrated Mahler scholar and broadcaster Deryck Cooke).

"Nielsen did in fact leave a few more sporadic clues as to his preoccupations while composing the work. These all have to do with primordial oppositions. At the end of his pencil draft score he wrote the motto: 'Dark, resting forces - Awakened forces', which could apply equally well to the contrast between the two main sections of the first movement and to that between the two movements themselves. He told a confidant that it was 'something very primitive I wanted to express: the division of dark and light, the battle between evil and good. A title such as 'Dreams and Deeds' could maybe sum up the inner picture I had in front of my eyes when composing.' And to his newspaper interviewer he explained that the symphony was ultimately concerned with the same elemental opposition as in his previous three, namely 'resting forces in contrast to active ones'.

"If 'The Inextinguishable' enshrined a conflict between Nielsen's essentially positive outlook on life and fearsome odds stacked against it, the Fifth Symphony revisits this arena with an even more comprehensive symphonic mastery.

"The first movement falls into two large sections. Nielsen's 'resting forces' express themselves initially as a kind of wandering indifference. He once described this state as 'Vegetative Nature', and the title 'Vegetative' actually stands at the head of his pencil draft score. Pairs of bassoons, and later horns, flutes and clarinets, drift aimlessly around an oscillating viola line that waits at first passively, then more anxiously, for something to happen. That line reacts to shivers on the cymbal as the wandering melody transfers to strings. An increasing sense of foreboding is registered by harsh accents in the cellos, and a kind of paralysis gradually steals over the music. The stage is set for the entrance of the side drum. From this point the struggle between conflicting forces ebbs and flows, eventually reaching stalemate and dying away under stabbing repeated notes on violins and celesta.

"As if waking from a bad dream, a warm G major tune breaks in on violas and cellos, supported by bassoons and horns. This unfolds in two glorious waves of increasingly contrapuntal activity, reaching an ecstatic climax. However, what promises to be a similarly positive third wave is soon clutched by fearful reminisces, and a mounting sense of alarm takes over. Woodwind and strings hurl what Nielsen called the 'evil motif' - a transformation of the violas' wave line - at one another, and at the high point the side drum returns at an unrelated faster tempo, with the instruction to disturb the orchestra at all costs. Pandemonium ensues, until a tidal wave of G major engulfs all the combatants and a battle-scarred tranquility concludes the first movement.

"The second movement begins with what the pioneering Nielsen scholar Robert Simpson aptly called 'a fount of regenerative energy'. At first this music seems to be irresistable in its onward sweep, but eventually it too succumbs to a terrifying loss of energy. That this has happened without the presence of the first movement's obvious tokens of ill-will - such as the percussion, the skirling clarinet and the dinning side drum - is all the more disheartening. The implication is that an even greater effort of will-power than in the first movement will be needed in order to regain a positive frame of mind.

"Nielsen's strategy is first of all to let evil forces rip, which he does in a fugue from hell that starts quietly on the violins but soon develops a nightmarish momentum and eventually blows itself to smithereens. The air having finally been cleared, another fugue begins, again on the violins but this time slowly and calmly transofrming the opening theme of the second movement and thinking its way through to enlightenment. It only remains for the 'fount of energy' to return and to find a way to avoid its previous path to ruin. This having been achieved, along with the revelation of the key of E flat major (also the key of the magnificent conclusion to the recent Fifth Symphony by Nielsen's Finnish neighbour, Sibelius) the final pages hold the banner of the Life Force triumphantly aloft. (David Fanning, 2013. From the liner notes.)

Performers: Kungliga Filharmonikerna, Sakari Oramo

1. Symphony No. 4, Op. 29, FS 76 'Det Uudslukkelige': I. Allegro –

2. Symphony No. 4, Op. 29, FS 76 'Det Uudslukkelige': II. Poco Allegretto –

3. Symphony No. 4, Op. 29, FS 76 'Det Uudslukkelige': III. Poco Adagio Quasi Andante –

4. Symphony No. 4, Op. 29, FS 76 'Det Uudslukkelige': IV. Allegro

5. Symphony No. 5, Op. 50 FS 97: I. Tempo Giusto –

6. Symphony No. 5, Op. 50 FS 97: II. Allegro – Presto – Andante Un Poco Tranquillo – Allegro

flac/16-bit

Carl Nielsen - Symphonies Nos. 2 & 6

"Nielsen was one of life's people watchers. From the time of his rustic upbringing on the island of Funen he was a talented mimic (a gift he seems to have inherited from his father), and he became known as a marvellous conversationalist and raconteur. His compulsive interest in all that was robust and healthy in human nature, no matter if that meant rough edges or strongly differing views from his own, also inspired him to some of his finest music.

"No single work exemplifies Nielsen's gift for musical empathy morte thrillingly than his 'Second Symphony'. It dates from 1902-02, a time when he was earning his living mainly as a somewhat frustrated second violinist in the orchestra of the Royal Opera in Copenhagen. The origins of the work, as he explained in a programme note near the end of his life, were in an allegorical picture he came across in a country inn, illustrating the Four Temperaments - the moods determined by the mixture of fluids in the body, at least according to medical theory with roots in the Ancient Greeks and Romans and still commonly believed up to the early 1800s. Imbalance between these fluids could supposedly create a disposition towards anger (choler), apathy (phlegm), sadness (melancholy) or carefree abandon (sanguinity). The comically exaggerated visual images of those characteristics apparently stayed with Nielsen and he soon saw their potential to map on the four movements of the traditional symphony.

"In the painting the Choleric temperament was apparently shown as a swash-buckling horse-rider: 'his eyes were bulging out of his head, his hair streamed wildly around his face, so distorted with rage and diabolical hatred that I could not help bursting out laughing'. Nielsen's symphonic equivalent is no laughing matter, however. A fiery Berliozian 'allegro', marked from the outset by slashing off-beat accents and rushing scale passages, its lyrical contrasts are like episodes in which the main character regrets his wildness without being able to prevent its return. Something close to this scenario would serve Nielsen again a quarter of a century later as the basis for his Clarinet Concerto.

"In complete contrast, the second movement, the Phlegmatic, is so easy-paced that it nearly falls asleep: 'I visualized a young fellow whose real inclination was to lie where the birds sing, where the fish glide noiselessly through the water, where the sun warms and the wind strokes mildly round one's curls.' Anyone who knows Nielsen's genial autobiography, 'My Childhood on Funen', will realise how close such an image was to his own nature, or at least to one part of it. In this movement, especially in the lazy undulating triads of the middle section, is contained the seed for the kind of inertia that would eventually take on a very different aspect: as a life-threatening - indeed life-on-earth-threatening - force in Nielsen's later symphonies.

"Next comes the Melancholic temperament, which like the Phlegmatic has little by way of contrast in its personality, other than a gravely beautiful, resigned episode in the middle. Again like its Phlegmatic counterpart, the movement becomes increasingly static, until, in the composer's words 'the parts intertwine like the threads of a net'. Even so, Nielsen was incapable of drawing anything other than a rounded character-portrait, and he give his 'heavy, melancholy man' a mitigating quality of stoical nobility from the outset. Eventually the music find its way to a calm and touching self-knowledge.

"Psychological progress of some such kind also underpins the Sanguine finale. This begins as the sketch of a man who 'storms thoughtlessly on in the belief that the whole world belongs to him, and that roast pigeons will fly into his mouth without work or bother'. However, 'Just once it seems that he has encountered something really serious; at least he meditates over something that is alien to his own nature, and it seems to affect him, so that while the final march may be happy and bright, it is still more dignified and not as silly and smug as some his previous bursts of activity.' In musical terms this is where Nielsen's famous 'progressive tonality' kicks in, as the movement - and indeed the entire symphony - ends in a brighter key than the one in which it began, as if to symbolise that adventure and self-transformation may be even higher values than empathy.

"In the post-Great War era, Nielsen's Fourth and Fifth Symphonies brought him the greatest measure of professional recognition he ever enjoyed in his lifetime. Critics in Scandinavia who had been troubled by what they saw as a veil of wilful experimentation in his earlier works were now, paradoxically, bowled over by these far more challenging masterpieces. Perhaps they got the point - and perhaps Nielsen himself made it easier for them to get the point - that what they had been bothered about was actually a deliberate negative polarity in an abstract human drama, rather than any kind of weakness or 'Schadenfreude'. Music of tough-minded, recalcitrant, even rebarbative kind was simply Nielsen's way of enshrining the struggles he perceived to be at the core of existence. Given what the First World War had done for the moral climate in Europe, that message was no hard to mistake.

"However, for the composer himself, the edge was taken off his creative triumphs by the realisation that he was not making the international headway he felt he deserved. He found little to admire in the European musical scene in the 1920s, with its extremes of hedonism and self-abnegation. And to make matters worse, his health was being undermined by heart problems that first manifested themselves seriously after his intense work on the Fifth Symphony. In any case, his abiding instinct for adventure dictated that his next symphony would have to move to a different arena. But where to, precisely, given that he had so recently scaled such mighty peaks?

"His first thought was, in effect, to take his cue from the work he had been doing for more than a decade in the area of folk-popular song. Accordingly, as he wrote to one of his daughters in August 1924, he envisaged a work that would be 'quite idyllic in character, beyond all time-bound taste and fashion... like the old 'a cappella' musicians'. But Nielsen was never one for planning out the precise route in advance, and this time his journey took him to regions far removed from the opening bars, with their tinkling glockenspiel, genial woodwind scales and childlike violins over tick-tock oboes and bassoons.

"In an intervew published two days before the first performance on 11th December 1925, he was asked about the title of the symphony. 'I've named it 'Sinfonia semplice',' he replied, 'because the main character is in a lighter vein than my other symphonies - there are merry things in it.' The interviewer pressed him further, no doubt because the composer had been in the news that year: at the time of the national celebrations for his 60th birthday, he had made unexpectedly cynical pronouncements on the career of a composer. Nielsen was adamant: 'The symphony has nothing whatsoever to do with my states of mind. What I experience in life never directly affects my music.' But he went on to give what may be an important clue to the tone of the symphony: 'It's natural for us to long for what we don't have.' In other words, the 'Sinfonia semplice' is not so much a simple symphony - far from it - but rather one that longs for a state of simplicity, more particularly for a return to the state of its opening bars.

"The symphony's final movement is, in fact, one of Nielsen's most tragic and full-worked out musical dramas, for all that it is expressed in a twelve-minute time-span and in highly economical texture. Each of its half-dozen main ideas is beguilingly innocent on initial presentation, but each is brutalised in the central phase of the movement, culminating in a full-scale panic attack and an agonisingly prolonged dissonance on horns and woodwin. This is, in effect, as anti-heroic a symphonic movement as anything in Shostakovich - who was composing his First Symphony at precisely the same time, but who almost certainly did not know Nielsen's music until much later in life.

"If this first movement is disturbing, what follows is even more so. A self-styled Humoresque, the second movement's prevailing tone is sardonic, yet not so obviously so that Nielsen felt it could speak for itself. In one and the same interview, two days before the premier in December 1925, he stressed that the symphony protrayed 'purely musical problems', yet then immediately contradicted himself, describing the percussion waking up the other instrumnts, which proceed to play 'modern music', arousing their distaste and later the contempt of the trombone, which plays yawning glissandi, as if to say 'Baa, baby food!', before the all fall peacefully asleep again. What is alarming about this satirical picture is a sense that the composer's own voice is virtually absent, having been so integral to the drama of the first movement.

"Then it seems that the slow movement may redress the balance. Nielsen's 'serious proposition' is an intense Bartókian fugue in the strings - the opening repeated notes harking right back to the first bar of the symphony. This is the sort of writing he had deployed so inspiringly in the second movement of the Fifth Symphony, to absorb negativity and to prepare the ground for a final burst of life-affirmation. This time, however, everything collapses and the music becomes entangled in a mesh of its own fevered anxiety - like the Melancholic Temperament but at a higher, existential level. The best it can hope for is a pale reconciliation to the status quo, blearily expressed in the closing bars.

"Before composing the finale Nielsen declared it would be a 'a variations work, a cosmic chasos, who atoms [...] clarify and unite to form a globe'. Yet again, however, the concept darkened as he worked on it. The variations are certainly there, and in the middle of the movement something very much like cosmic chaos indeed comes across the music. But the envisaged gathering into wholeness encounters obstacles that for once in his symphonic career prove insuperable. As the composer confided to a friend, the bizarre variation with tuba and percussion represents 'death knocking at the door', and the concluding fanfares therefore cannot be other than a death-defying gesture. Finally the two bassoons are left honking out their lowest note with all their might. Thus the greatest life-affirmer in the 20th-century symphonic tradition ends his last symphony by symbolically giving death the finger." (David Fanning, 2014. From the liner notes.) 

Performers: Kungliga Filharmonikerna, Sakari Oramo

1. Symphony No. 2, Op. 16, FS 29 'De Fire Temperamenter': I. Allegro Colleric

2. Symphony No. 2, Op. 16, FS 29 'De Fire Temperamenter': II. Allegro Comodo E Flemmatico

3. Symphony No. 2, Op. 16, FS 29 'De Fire Temperamenter': III. Andante Malincolico

4. Symphony No. 2, Op. 16, FS 29 'De Fire Temperamenter': IV. Allegro Sanguineo

5. Symphony No. 6, FS 116 'Sinfonia Semplice': I. Tempo Giusto

6. Symphony No. 6, FS 116 'Sinfonia Semplice': II. Humoresque. Allegretto

7. Symphony No. 6, FS 116 'Sinfonia Semplice': III. Proposta Seria. Adagio

8. Symphony No. 6, FS 116 'Sinfonia Semplice': IV. Theme And Variations. Allegro

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Carl Nielsen - Symphonies Nos. 1 & 3

"Nielsen's childhood, so eloquently evoked in the memoirs he published after his 60th birthday, played a formative role in his musical personality on many levels. It gave him enduring respect for the values of ordinary country folk, delight in the endless variety of nature and relish for the inner strength of his early musical loves, Bach and Mozart. Later, his training at the Royal Conservatoire in Copenhagen, principally as a violinist, nurtured his early compositional efforts, especially in the fields of chamber music and song.

"But so far as larger forms such as the symphony are concerned, it was his employment in the Royal Opera Orchestra from 1889 that gave him the material basis and his scholarship-funded travels in Europe from 1890-91 that provided the decisive inspiration. In the course of that study-trip he began to sense the kind of orchestral music he wanted to write (emulating the likes of Beethoven and Brahms) and also the kind he didn't (essentially anything that smacked of self-indulgence of gratuitous effect).

"Two 'upbeats' preceded the symphony he finally set to work on in the summer of 1891. One was a complete symphonic first movement, composed in 1888 and named (not by Nielsen himself, it seems) 'Symphonic Rhapsody', for its delayed first performance. Despite its athletic, swinging triple-time motion, which was to become a hallmark of several of his mature symphonies, he agreed with some of the critics that this piece was not strong enough to stand alone, and he made no more than a concept - but an ambitious one - for a symphony with the programme 'From earth you have come; to earth you shall return'.

"Nielsen's definitive 'First Symphony', which took shape over a period of two and a half years, is far removed from such grandiose ambitions, or indeed from any kind of programme (he was highly amused when a well-meaning lady interpreted his idiosyncratic designation for the first movement, 'orgoglioso' - 'proudly' - as meaning 'organ-like'). Thoroughly classical in its proportions and discipline, the work owes much to the benchmark of Schumann, widely adopted by symphonists all over Europe at the time. At the same time it displays affinities with the fieriness of Berlioz - the very opening bars are a close cousin to the 'Orgy of the Brigands' from the Frenchman's 'Harold in Italy' Symphony, also with the lyrical tone of Grieg, and with the rhythmic vitality of Grieg's fellow-Norwegian Johan Svendsen, who conducted the première on 14th March 1894.

"In his review of that performance, Charles Kjerulf, the most influential Danish critic of the time, summed up the symphony's character as 'a child playing with dynamite'. The dynamite is perhaps most clearly to be found in the compact, propulsive rhythmical units of the first movement, which carry something close to a Beethovian generative force. In fact Nielsen had recently been so impressed with Beethoven's Fifth that he had set himself the task of writing out its first movement from memory, in full score. The childlike quality surfaces especially at movements when the pace slackens and pastoral relaxation takes over, as it does most obviously in the second movement - a deeply felt 'Andante', but one that conveys a sense of wonder at the beauty of the world, rather than projecting individualistic soul-states.

"Next comes a scherzo-substitute, somewhat Brahmsian in its initially easy-going character, though as it proceeds the tone darkens. In fact, this third movement functions as a kind of crucible, in which the symphony's musical constituents are as it were melted down and reshaped, with implications not only for the dramatic contrasts in the middle of the movement but also for the ultimate destination of the finale.

"Nominally in G minor, the symphony might have concluded quite conventionally in G major, or even placed the entire last movement entirely in that key. In fact Nielsen's finale works round to a coda in C major, making this possibly the first ever symphony to end in a key other than its home tonic. This phenomenon generally known as 'progressive tonality', is not something Nielsen worked out with scientific precision - though with hindsight the destination tonality reflects harmonic relationships subtly implanted earlier in the work, all the way back to its opening chord. Rather, it is the technical manifestation of a sense of adventure and a refusal to be tied down that are there for all to hear and that would lead Nielsen into all sort of mould-breaking advnetures in his later symphonies.

"In 1906, at the halfway point between his Second and Third Symphonies, Nielsen scored a national triumph with his comic opera 'Maskarade' - an immensely tuneful and heart-warming score that soon came to be recognized as the Danish national opera 'par excellence'. Then in December the following year his song 'Jens vejmand' ('Jens the Road-mender') suddenly became a smash hit after its first public performance. Nielsen had already resigned his post as second violinist in the Royal Opera Orchestra, and early in 1908 he was appointed assistant conductor, a post he would hold until June 1914.

"He was clearly coming into his prime as composer, performer and national icon, and his growing recognition brought with it increasingly regular commissions for incidental music and cantatas. There was even a measure of international success. In the autumn of 1906 the Chicago Symphony Orchestra udner Frederick Stock successfully performed his First Symphony. Interest in neighbouring Sweden and Norway was on the ride, and Nielsen gained an influential Czech supporter in the shape of the author Max Brod, who sang his praises in the German musical press and who perceptively noted an affinity - entirely coincidental - with his compatriot and friend Leoš Janáček.

"Curiously, Nielsen had very little contact with his symphonic opposite number and exact contemporary in Finland, Jean Sibelius. Nevertheless, not least among many significant musical impressions in these years was Sibelius's Second Symphony, whose influence may well be reflected in the long pedal-points and intense high string writing in the second movement of the 'Sinfonia espansiva'. Such ideas are one obvious aspect of 'expansiveness'. But Nielsen's idea with his unusual title is embodied above all in the character of the first movement.

"In later life Nielsen wrote three programme notes for the piece. The nearest he came to explaining his concept of the 'expansive' was in March 1931, seven months before his death: 'The first movement was meant as a burst of energy and life-affirmation thrown out into the wide world, which we humans not only desire to know in all its multifarious effects, but which we want to conquer and make our own.' To express that urge, Nielsen hit on a vigorous, muscular triple-time pulse that ultimately goes back to the first movement of Beethoven's 'Eroica', from where it passed down to him through Schumann's 'Rhenish' Symphony and Brahms's Third. Nielsen himself had adumbrated it in his 'Symphonic Rhapsody'. This kind of writing, with its highly arched thematic contours, its thrusting rhythms and propulsive harmony, gives the sensation of being composed as if in the future tense - always urgently looking forward. A significant operatic counterpart is the opening scene of Nielsen's biblical opera 'Saul and David', where exactly this musical character depicts the Israelites anxiously awaiting the delayed arrival of the prophet Samuel.

"In complete contrast to the phenomenal energy of the 'Allegro espansivo', the pastoral slow movement evokes the rolling countryside of Nielsen's native island of Funen. Here, in the concluding stages, vocalises for solo soprano and baritone are added to heighten the sense of lyrical ecstasy, expressed in a fragment of text found in Nielsen's draft score: 'All thoughts have vanished: I am lying beneath the heavens.' As he put it in one of his programme notes, the presence of the voices is 'only to highlight the peaceful atmosphere you might imagine in Paradise before the Fall'.

"In the third movement the opposed forces so far encountered are held in an uneasy balance, the moods being poised 'between dream and wakefulness', as a pupil of Nielsen put it in an analysis that came out - with the composer's approval - soon after the first published score. As so often with Nielsen, this stage of the symphony is something of a melting-pot, in which difficult issues are worked out - here notably in some convulsive fugal writing - that will enable the finale to consolidate, rather than having to fight all its battles from scratch.

"Originally headed 'pomposo' - which in Nielsen's understanding stood for grandeur but not self-aggrandisement - this finale is in fact a remarkable non-conflictual affair, at least by comparison with its counterparts in the Fourth and Fifth Symphonies. The music strides out, in the composer's words, as 'a hymn to work and the healthy enjoyment of daily life', in which the 'the orchestra sings its introductory theme in so commonplace a fashion that you might well call it 'healthy-popular''. The conclusion comes 'like a man who, uninterestingly [in the sense of undermonstratively], but healthily and at his ease, reaches the goal of his travels'.

"The première of the 'Sinfonia espansiva' took place in Copenhagen on 28th February 1912, in a concert that also included Nielsen's new Violin Concerto. The event was a triumph, not only delighting his uspporters but also winning over those Danish critics who had previously been sceptical of his abilities, and the symphony went on to enjoy many performances in different countries, often under the composer's own baton. Two months after the première, Nielsen conducted it in Amsterdam. During the most restful parts of the finale, he asked the famous Concertgebouw Orchestra to play as 'boringly' as possible, and he stretched lazily to make his point. The musicians immediately imitated his gesture, and everyone burst out laughing. 'Bravo, gentlemen,' said Nielsen. 'I see we understand eachother.' And the laughter resumed. (David Fanning, 2014. From the liner notes.)

Performers: Kungliga Filharmonikerna, Sakari Oramo

1. Symphony No. 1 In G Minor, Op. 7, FS 16: I. Allegro Orgoglioso

2. Symphony No. 1 In G minor, Op. 7, FS 16: II. Andante

3. Symphony No. 1 In G minor, Op. 7, FS 16: III. Allegro Comodo - Andante Sostenuto - Tempo I

4. Symphony No. 1 In G minor, Op. 7, FS 16: IV. Finale: Allegro Con Fuoco

5. Symphony No. 3, Op. 27, FS 60 'Sinfonia Espansiva': I. Allegro Espansivo

6. Symphony No. 3, Op. 27, FS 60 'Sinfonia Espansiva': II. Andante Pastorale

7. Symphony No. 3, Op. 27, FS 60 'Sinfonia Espansiva': III. Allegretto Un Poco

8. Symphony No. 3, Op. 27, FS 60 'Sinfonia Espansiva': IV. Finale: Allegro

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Carl Nielsen - Clarinet & Flute Concertos; Wind Quintet

"Nielsen's first instrument was the violin. He was playing a miniature fiddle in his father's village band and composing dance tunes for it by the age of nine. In his teens Nielsen played bugle and trombone with the Odense regimental band. He therefore knew stringed and brass instruments inside out, so it is interesting that some of his most distinctive and treasured contributions to the solo instrumental repertory are for the woodwin family.

"It all started with the Wind Quintet. Apparently Nielsen was talking on the telephone to a friend, in whose house four members of the Copenhagen Wind Quintet were rehearsing Mozart's Sinfonia for wind instruments and orchestra. Hearing the performers discussing - or occasionally arguing over - details gave Nielsen the idea for a new piece, in which the kind of intimate dialogue one firneds in the chamber music of Mozart and Haydn might be translated into contemporary Danish terms.

"At first Nielsen seems to have seen the work as a relaxation after composing the Fifth Symphony (1921-2), but the Quintet soon acquired a life of its own. Light and humorous in flavour, the Quintet is also a sophisticated piece of musical construction, with something of Haydn's ability to surprise the ear while maintaining an underlying sense of what Nielsen's contemporary Sibelius called 'profound logic'.

"After an opening movement which sounds like an animated but essentially convivial instrumental conversation comes a beautifully stylised Minuet, in which Mozartian poise and the contours of Danish folk music are combined without a hint of contrivance. A shadow falls across the following Præludium, with its astringent harmonies and the melancholy tang of the cor anglais (temporarily replacing the brightly pastoral oboe); but the mood brightens with a Lutheran hymn in 3/4 composed by Nielsen himself: 'My Jesus, make my heart to love Thee'. In the following variations such harmonious togetherness gives way to individualism - sometimes good-natured, sometimes less so. The ensemble comes back together at the end for a return of the hymn, now in 4/4; it is as though something of the essence of this tune has changed through being pulled apart by the players.

"Writing the Wind Quintet changed Nielsen's attitude to orchestration. While composing the the Sixth Symphony (1924-5), he remarked, 'I think through the instruments - as though I had crept inside them.' And after the success of the Wind Quintet's premier, Nielsen announced his intention of composing a concerto for each member of the Copenhagen Wind Quintet. Alas, he had only written two - for flute and clarinet - when he died aged 66." (From the liner notes.)

Performers: Berliner Philharmoniker, Simon Rattle, Sabine Meyer, Emmanuel Pahud

1. Flute Concerto: I. Allegro Moderato

2. Flute Concerto: II. Allegretto

3. Clarinet Concerto: I. Allegretto Un Poco

4. Clarinet Concerto: II. Poco Adagio

5. Clarinet Concerto: III. Allegro Non Troppo

6. Clarinet Concerto: IV. Allegro Vivace

7. Wind Quintet In A Major, Op.43: I. Allegro Ben Moderato

8. Wind Quintet In A Major, Op.43: II. Menuet

9. Wind Quintet In A Major, Op.43: III. Praeludium: Adagio

10. Wind Quintet In A Major, Op.43: IV. Tema Con Variazioni: Un Poco Andantino

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Carl Nielsen - String Quartets Vol. 2

"Although most of a decade separates the two string quartets by Carl Nielsen (1865-1931) recorded here, like the other two quartets in his official worklist they belong to the more youthful end of his oeuvre. As a mature composer he did at one point in the 1920s consider plans for yet another quartet. But he abandoned them in the middle of bar 31 of what was presumably to have been a first movement, and threw himself into other projects.

"The F minor quartet is from 1890, when the young, still unmarried composer was able to enjoy a regular salary again, now as a violinist in the Royal Danish Orchestra, something he had not done since stopping as a regimental musician in Odense to go to the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen. There had also been another stroke of luck: applying for the second time, he had been awarded the biggest grant in Danish cultural life, 'Det Ancherske Legat', worth DKr 1800 – by comparison his annual salary as an orchestra musician was DKr 1200.

"With leave of absence from the Royal Theatre, Nielsen was able to set his course for Germany on 3rd September 1890. In his trunk he had a letter of recommendation from the composer Niels W. Gade, whose name was at least as famous in Germany as in Denmark, as well as the manuscript of the F minor quartet. He had begun work on it that spring, and had in fact meant to finish it before his departure. He had even worked on it in his summer holidays with his parents in the Funen village of Nørre Lyndelse. Nevertheless only the first movement was really finished.

"The remainder of the work was written amidst a tumult of new impressions, for on this first journey outside the borders of his native country the 25-year old composer was hungry for all kind of artistic impulses, and received them in Dresden, Leipzig and Berlin in turn. In Dresden, for example, he was at the 'Gemäldegalerie' on 5th September, where according to his diary he was greatly taken with Rembrandt's 'The Gold Weigher' and Juspe de Ribera's 'Diogenes with His Lantern'. And in the rough draft of the fourth movement of the quartet we find a handwritten remark that clearly documents that he himself felt there was a connection between the two arts: 'The 2nd time the secondary subject does not come; a snatch of the coda in the first part appears as such, but with many odd harmonies. Remember 'odd', little Carl. Think of Ribèra!!' The inspiration could also be of a more outward kind; after an elevated soirée on 26th September at the 'Böhmischer Bahnhof' Nielsen went home and composed an expansion of the first subject of the last movement, which had occured to him on the way.

"More or less finished with the quartet, and armed with Gade's introduction, Nielsen now looked up one of the leading musical personalities of the day in Berlin, the conducter and composer Joseph Joachim (1831-1907). He had known Gade since their youth and promised to listen to and comment on the new work. So after five rehearsals, an ad-hoc ensemble (Nielsen himself, Fini Henriques, Frederik Schnedler-Petersen and the American cellist Paul Henry Morgan) gave the work its informal christening on 18th December at the 'Hochschule für Ausübende Tonkunst', where Joachim was a highly esteemed teacher.

"'It is extremely difficult to play well, since there are so many modulations and often enharmonic affairs that have to be played so purely that the half of it would have been enough. If you add to this the fear of playing for Joachim, you can imagine that it did not go all that well,' Nielsen wrote back afterwards to his old theory teacher from the academy years, Orla Rosenhoff. In other words Nielsen knew very well what made - and still makes - his quartets difficult to play.

"The old master responded with both praise and criticism; he recognized both imagination and talent in the music, but on the whole it was too radical for him, and he wanted to suggest some changes. Nielsen replied that he was afraid the work would lose its character, and the good-natured Joachim seems to have retreated: 'Well, my dear Mr. Nielsen, perhaps I am after all an old philistine. Write as you will, just as long as that is how you feel it.'

"The young Nielsen stood his ground. The Danish newspaper reviewers, who otherwise often scolded him, were nevertheless surprisingly positive when the quartet was given its first public performance in Copenhagen on 8th April 1892. Most unreserved was 'Politiken's Charles Kjerulf: 'Carl Nielsen is clearly a considerable talent; none of his works has shown him as assured as this quartet, which besides the most youthful dauntlessness exhibits a will and skill matched by very few of the works of our other very young composers.

"The F mionor quartet was printed by the publisher Wilhelm Hansen in 1892 and could now be performed by ensembles who did not first have to borrow the manuscipt music from the composer. In October 1894 when Nielsen, in the company of the music publisher Alfred Wilhelm Hansen, ran into the great Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe (1858-1931) in the railway station in Leipzig after hearing him play earlier that evening in the Gewandhaus, the latter immediately declared that Nielsen was not wholly unknown to him - he had recently heard the F minor quartet performed at Nice, had liked it and had procured the music. As proof he hummed the beginning of the first movement! Ysaÿe may have later done more than simply hum: the four string players in one of the top ensembles of the day, the 'Quatuor de Bruxelles', had a shared point of departure in master classes with Ysaÿe, and a few years later they put the F minor quartet on their repertoire. They first played it at a concert in Copenhagen on 13th February 1909, then later the same year they presented it in Mexico City and Buenos Aires. Thus it also became the only one of the four string quartets ever to cross the Atlantic during the composer's lifetime.

"The E-flat major quartet (composed in 1897-98) is associated with a tragicomic episode that meant that the birth of the work was drawn out longer than anticipated. The composer himself was given an account of it, but only far later, in a retrospective article marking his sixtieth birthday in 1925:

"'I had composed a string quartet. The first two movements had already been copied by the music copyist; I had tried them out with my comrades, and we agreed that it was a work with which I had made a great effort. Now I also had the last two movements finished, so I packed it all into a large roll, took my bike and set off along Gothersgade towards Nørrevold, where the music copyist lived. When I got to Rosenborg Brøndanstalt [a mineral water factory], I saw a vehicle with two horses, one of which had fallen over and lay floundering with its legs over the pavement. The driver looked very helpless, as the horse had ended up lying in a strange lopsided position. Since as a young man I had worked with horses and had often myself been a driver, I jumped off my bike, put it up against the Brøndanstalt, shoved my music roll into the hands of a boy who was standing in the crowd, and asked him to hold it for a moment. It was only the work of a couple of minutes to cut one of the traces to the cart over, get a horse blanket under the forelegs of the horse and get it up on its legs; but when I got back the boy had vanished, probably into the Vognmagergade area, with my great work. I rode home in despair and told my wife about my loss. The she got the idea that we should go up into the neighbourhood and arouse some attention about the matter among the young people of the streets, and in time we succeeded in gathering a very large crowd to whom we announced that whoever could find the boy with the roll of music would get a large reward [...] However, I never got my work back, but had to reconstruct it laboriously from various notes and sketches and from memory.

"The episode must have taken place in the autumn of 1898, but cannot be directly documented by contemporary sources. They only mention the preceeding work: 'Finished the work on the first movement of a quartet in E-flat major in December '97. Am work on the andante at present,' the composer had noted in his diary on 6th January 1898. Nevertheless a good part of the year evidently passed before he was ready to saddle up his bicycle with the finished score. He had met his wife Anne Marie, who was a sculptress, in 1891 in Paris, during the above-mentioned study trip. Now in this very year, in the summer of 1898, they had one of their periods of friction, for reasons that are not hard to understand. He spent his holiday from the Royal Theatre on her family's farm in Jutland, where he tried at one and the same time to keep the farm going and to write a string quartet, while she stated at home in Copenhagen to take care of her sculptural work - she was modelling a red stallion - and their three small children. 'Can't you see and get you final movement done and I'll be busy with my horse and we'll never again spend a summer like this year's, will we, my own dearest?' she had written to him on 2nd August in a clear attempt at reconciliation.

"We do not know exactly how long it took Nielsen to reconstruct the last two movements of the quartet, for it is unlikely to have been true when he described the work as in the process of publication in an application for a ministerial composer subsidy dated 7th November 1898. He did not hand in the score to Wilhelm Hansen until the early summer of 1899, and the printed edition was not available until December 1900. On the title page the work was then dedicated to his older colleague Edvard Grieg, who was among the family's circle of friends.

"By then the quartet had already seen a semi-private first performance on 1st May 1899 in the relatively newly-founded 'Vor Forening'. The public one was given by the newly-formed Høeberg Quartet on 4th October 1901, also in Copenhagen. The latter elicited a very clear-sighted review in 'Illustreret Tidende', written by the almost ten-years-older Hother Ploug, who alongside a career in the central administration also worked as a music write and composer:

"'A strange work, like everything that has come from his hand, but more a work for connoisseurs than for the general public. In particular, the energetic first allegro with its enclosed structure and the highly convoluted contrapuntal work proved caviare to the general... Here we meet a young Danish composer with a sense of form and the sculptural not strongly evident in many others at present than perhaps Johan Svendsen and people are repelled by it. In a way this is explicable enough: when one is bottle-fed day in and day out with 'romances' and romance-like music, in the end one forfeits the feeling for stronger fare.'

"Caviare to the general or not - during the composer's lifetime the E-flat major quartet remained the most critically acclaimed, but also the least performed of the works!" (Knud Ketting, 2008. From the liner notes.)

Performers: The Young Danish String Quartet

1. String Quartet In F Minor, Op. 5: I. Allegro Non Troppo Ma Energico

2. String Quartet In F Minor, Op. 5: II. Un Poco Adagio

3. String Quartet In F Minor, Op. 5: III. Allegretto Scherzando

4. String Quartet In F Minor, Op. 5: IV. Allegro Appassionato

5. String Quartet In E-Flat Major, Op. 14: I. Allegro Con Brio

6. String Quartet In E-Flat Major, Op. 14: II Andante Sostenuto

7. String Quartet In E-Flat Major, Op. 14: III Allegretto Pastorale - Presto - Allegretto Pastorale

8. String Quartet In E-Flat Major, Op. 14: IV Allegro Coraggioso

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