Description
Dacapo: Carl Nielsen — Symphonies Nos. 4 & 5 (Schønwandt) (Audio CD)
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Product Details:
- Product Type: Audio CD
- Brand / Label: Dacapo
- Composer: Carl Nielsen (1865–1931)
- Title: Symphony No. 4 "The Inextinguishable" / Symphony No. 5
- Orchestra: The Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra
- Conductor: Michael Schønwandt
- Release Year: 2000
- UPC: 730099985628
- Catalog Number: 8.224156
- Genre: Classical, Symphony
- Condition: New / Factory Sealed
Product Features
- Format: CD
- Discs: 1
- Tracks: 10
- Total runtime: 75:56
- Sound: DDD (Digital)
- Recorded in cooperation with Danmarks Radio (DR)
- Soloists: René Mathiesen & Christian Utke Schiøler (timpani, Sym. 4); Niels Thomsen (clarinet), Tom Nybye (snare drum, Sym. 5)
- Language: Instrumental
Overview
Two of Carl Nielsen's mightiest symphonies, played by the orchestra that knows them best. The Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra under Michael Schønwandt brings authority and idiomatic feeling to the Fourth and Fifth — the works at the heart of Nielsen's symphonic achievement.
The Fourth, "The Inextinguishable," is Nielsen's hymn to the life force itself, written during the First World War. Its famous finale pits two sets of timpani against the orchestra in a battle that resolves into blazing affirmation — a moment unlike anything else in the repertoire.
The Fifth is darker and stranger. Its first movement builds to a notorious passage where a solo snare drummer is instructed to improvise "as if to disrupt the music," embodying a struggle between order and chaos. Schønwandt handles its two-movement arc with a strong sense of cumulative tension.
Recorded digitally with Danmarks Radio, this is a vivid, well-engineered coupling. For anyone exploring Nielsen — or building a Scandinavian collection — these are the two symphonies to start with, in performances of real conviction.
Interesting Facts
- Nielsen called his Fourth Symphony "The Inextinguishable," referring to the elemental will to live that music expresses.
- The Fourth's finale features a dramatic duel between two timpanists placed on opposite sides of the orchestra.
- The Fifth Symphony's first movement includes a famous passage where the snare drummer is asked to play against the orchestra, almost destroying it.
- Carl Nielsen was a contemporary and Nordic counterpart to Sibelius, though his style is more astringent and forward-looking.
- Michael Schønwandt is one of Denmark's most distinguished conductors and a leading interpreter of the national repertoire.
- Dacapo is Denmark's national record label, devoted to Danish composers and recorded here with the country's flagship radio orchestra.
Track Listing
Symphony No. 4, FS 76, Op. 29 "The Inextinguishable" (1914–16) — 36:28
- Allegro — 12:30
- Poco allegretto — 4:53
- Poco adagio quasi andante — 9:32
- Con anima – Allegro — 9:32
Symphony No. 5, FS 97, Op. 50 (1920–22) — 38:21
- I. Tempo giusto — 10:37
- Adagio — 10:02
- II. Allegro — 6:28
- Presto — 3:12
- Andante poco tranquillo — 4:55
- Allegro (Tempo I) — 3:03
Publishers
Released 2000 by Dacapo, Copenhagen (catalog 8.224156), in cooperation with Danmarks Radio. Distributed by MVD Music and Video Distribution, Munich.
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