I first encountered Carl Nielsen’s music at the age of 13, courtesy of Paavo Berglund’s masterly recording of the composer’s Symphony No. 6. It was love at first hearing. Since then a lot of things have changed. Quite a few composers I loved then are barely tolerable to me now; my enthusiasm for others has since been tempered by a more soberly critical spirit. But my adoration of Carl Nielsen’s music has remained steadfast for the past quarter of a century. If anything, my appreciation for his genius, for the humanity of his art only increases with each passing year.

What is it about Nielsen’s music that is so special? It is the restlessness of the man’s spirit, his eagerness to explore, his readiness to roam ever further beyond the horizon. Whereas his great Scandinavian contemporary Jean Sibelius seemed to have spent his entire career retracing his steps with each symphony and tone poem in the hope of making the ascent towards the summit of his elusive perfection better still, Nielsen sought to venture through different paths with each new score, tearing up the maps from prior journeys, and guided by his unquenchable thirst for aesthetic wanderlust. “Give us something else, give us something new,” he once stated, “and let us feel that we are still alive, instead of constantly going around in deedless admiration for the conventional.”

His body of work contains a multitude of genres—concerti, chamber music, songs, solo instrumental works, and brilliant operas which rank with the best of the 20th century’s—but his six symphonies are perhaps the backbone of his kaleidoscopic art. Each one documents a remarkable stylistic leap from the last; taken cumulatively, the evolution from the youthful buoyancy of Nielsen’s Symphony No. 1 to the unsettlingly dark, embittered grotesquerie of his final “Sinfonia semplice” is dramatic to behold.

Because of the wide disparities in texture, mood, and form, his symphonic cycle are a formidable challenge for any single conductor to render. That has not stopped them from trying. Beginning in the 1970s with his fellow countryman Ole Schmidt, many conductors have attempted to wrangle together these multifaceted scores. (A couple—Leonard Bernstein and Chung Myung-Whun—attempted to do so, but left their cycles incomplete for varying reasons.) But unlike Sibelius, who counted on the support of a network of powerful admirers, critics, and conductors in England and America, appreciation of Nielsen remained largely confined to Scandinavia. Consequently, his symphonies arrived relatively late to records and international recognition of his importance continues to lag behind other composers of his generation. At least here in Los Angeles, his music—save for the Wind Quintet—is rarely performed.

Fortunately, despite all that, Nielsen’s symphonies do not lack for excellent recordings. Schmidt’s aforementioned cycle comes to mind. But two of the finest cycles of his symphonies came along during the sesquicentennial of his birth in 2015. While the pioneering recordings by Danish conductors such as Thomas Jensen, Erik Tuxen, and Launy Grøndahl ring with an authenticity that demand the attention of dedicated Nielsenites, these newest recordings not only interpretively hold up on their own, but the sheer polish of their orchestral execution would have dazzled the composer had he lived to hear them. Nielsen is a first-class composer whose music demands to be played by first-class orchestras.

The following is a brief overview of these recordings from 2015, ranked in order of personal preference.

BBC Philharmonic Orchestra/John Storgårds [Chandos]: The Icelandic conductor’s set is perhaps the most consistently satisfying with respect to persuasiveness of interpretation and excellence in sound. Storgårds’ Nielsen is brawny, square-jawed, and muscular, leaping from height to height. He is at his best in the first three symphonies, where his clear-eyed approach fits well with the unbuttoned, open air mood of the composer’s pre-World War I music. His recording of the Symphony No. 1 is a delight, one of the best since André Previn’s; while the surging power of his “The Four Temperaments” ranks comfortably with Morton Gould’s. In the final two symphonies, however, Storgårds tends towards the prosaic. Though still very fine recordings, his rendering of the Symphony No. 5 lacks that last spark of wildness, of primal energy that fuels the best performances by Bernstein, Tuxen, and Kondrashin, among others. Additionally, the cavalcade of unsettling ironies in the Symphony No. 6 are presented at times with poker-faced plainness, their incongruous edges smoothed out. Nevertheless, both recordings are still quite good. The Chandos sound, as usual, is bold and splashy, with a sonic perspective that seems to sit the listener face-to-face with the orchestra. Insightful and informative liner notes by David Fanning round out this superb set.
Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra/Sakari Oramo [BIS]: Oramo, on the other hand, is at his best in the last three Nielsen symphonies. His Symphony No. 6 might be the very best ever committed to records; more than earning its favorable rank alongside the splendid recordings of this tricky work by Schmidt, Berglund, Jensen, Jascha Horenstein, and Tor Mann. Like Berglund, Oramo seems to regard the composer’s final symphony as proto-Shostakovichian, highlighting the streak of disillusionment and anger that courses throughout. The Royal Stockholm brass are superb as are its winds, which chatter vividly in the “Humoreske.” Oramo’s “Inextinguishable” and Symphony No. 5 would be among the very best if not for the somewhat shallow, boxy sound that BIS unfortunately imposed upon these performances (and which was subsequently much improved in this cycle’s later installments). Nevertheless, Oramo’s razor-sharp dynamic contrasts and general sympathy for Nielsen’s late idiom shine through despite these drawbacks. The early symphonies are also excellent, but it is in the late scores where Oramo is most in his element.
Various soloists; New York Philharmonic Orchestra/Alan Gilbert [Danacord]: It is sad to report that the New York Philharmonic’s first complete Nielsen cycle ended up being a bit of a bungled opportunity. The orchestra, to be sure, is gorgeous: Powerful and noble brass, characterful winds, sleek strings, all of them blended into a rich, oaken tone that amply highlight Nielsen’s debt to Beethoven and Brahms. Danacord’s production is as good as one can find these days, with a spacious sonic perspective that balances ensemble blend with telling individual textural detail. The problem, however, is the cipher helming the podium. Gilbert, at least in my personal experience and estimation, is one of the blandest, most boring conductors alive today. His autopilot cruise through Nielsen’s symphonies is especially woeful in the last three. Simply put, Gilbert’s anonymous run-through of these scores, which demand a level of interpretive verve and direction that is simply missing here, can often be a cheerless slog for the listener to endure. Fortunately, he is not all bad. Gilbert’s hands-off approach is less of an impediment in the early symphonies, where at least the orchestra is allowed to sing out beautifully. Shockingly, the “Sinfonia espansiva” somehow manages to rouse him out from his usual somnambulism, drawing from him a performance which unfurls with a majestic, unforced brilliance and a natural sense of pacing that places it among the very best recordings of that work. He also proves to be a sensitive partner for his soloists in the Nielsen concerti, all of which are excellent; the Violin Concerto with Nikolaj Znaider might be my favorite recording of all.
Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra/Paavo Järvi [RCA/Sony]: Decent, but somewhat faceless performances in OK sound. Especially disappointing given that his father Neeme recorded a very fine cycle for DG some 30 years ago. Admittedly, I have not listened to this set again since early 2016, so if given another listening to today I may, perhaps, feel differently enough to revise my opinion. Suffice to say that Oramo and Storgårds keep me coming back. Even Gilbert does once in awhile (especially for the concerti). But not Järvi fils. [EDIT 12/12/19: Sometimes I’m just full of it. Having reacquainted myself with this set over the past few days, I’m struggling to understand why these recordings failed to move me back in 2016. Aside from the graininess and occasional garishness of the production, the performances themselves are masterly. Paavo Järvi’s Nielsen is some of the most gripping I’ve ever heard, with especially splendid recordings of Symphonies Nos. 2, 4, and 5. The latter is easily one of the finest on records, its last movement bounding dynamically from the inertness of its predecessor. (The only quibble I have is one that crops up in even the best recordings of the work: A much too reticent snare drummer at the end of the first movement. For a truly terrifyingly wild take on that solo, listen to the classic Jascha Horenstein recording on Unicorn, or the otherwise forgettable reading by Adrian Leaper on Naxos.) From now on this cycle will be ranked alongside Schmidt, Storgårds, and Oramo among my personal favorites.]
London Symphony Orchestra/Sir Colin Davis [LSO Live]: Davis’ Nielsen is a dry, loveless affair. The sound from the Barbican is expectedly horrid. With his utter lack of aptitude or sympathy for these works, you have to wonder why the conductor even bothered to perform, much less record them.

A Nielsen cycle for our time: A photograph of my personal copy of John Storgårds’ excellent Nielsen symphony cycle for Chandos.

One composer is currently being feted as a “neglected genius” whose music possesses the “potential power to… change lives for the better [author’s emphasis].” Another’s music is derided as “facile, badly orchestrated, and comically derivative.” Within a span of five years in the 1940s each of them penned their respective second symphonies. A couple of weeks ago, I spent a few hours listening, then re-listening to each one, coming to some surprising personal conclusions.

Mieczysław Weinberg, whose music has garnered wider attention in recent years, managed to live long enough to see the first flickerings of interest in his work outside of Russia, which began shortly before his death in 1996. At the time his name was known almost exclusively to Shostakovich experts. Not only was the elder composer a mentor and personal friend of Weinberg’s, he also had esteemed his talent very highly, ranking him among his own personal favorites.

Discussion of Weinberg’s tragic biography, with his early years being disfigured first by the aggression of Hitler, then by the paranoia of Stalin, has become difficult to disentangle from the music. In light of this, one can only marvel at Weinberg’s sheer fecundity and sense of craftsmanship, which alone are an eloquent testament of civilization’s tenacity in transcending barbarism. Remarkably, he managed to be the sole survivor of his family and even more remarkably went on to live a full life; eventually penning over 150 numbered works, some with laudably humanist themes like his opera The Passenger and his final symphony from 1991.

Putting aside these extramusical considerations, however, it is hard to ignore the fact that he never seemed quite able to come out from under the Shostakovichian shadow which looms over all his work (although one could argue that it was he who influenced the elder composer as Weinberg’s early music sometimes eerily prefigures his mentor’s late music in texture, if not exactly in quality). Whereas Shostakovich’s absorbs and unifies various disparate elements—Honegger, Hindemith, Stravinsky, Krenek, Mahler, jazz-flavored pop, Russian folk song, and Soviet mass choruses—into a single, unmistakably original artistic voice, the only significant influence readily discernible in Weinberg is Shostakovich. So derivative is his music that one is tempted to view Weinberg’s catalog as a grand, extended musical commentary on Shostakovich.

His Symphony No. 2, Op. 30 from 1946 (recently recorded and issued by Deutsche Grammophon) vividly illustrates this problem. Composed only a handful of years after Weinberg escaped his native Poland, the symphony bares its emotional scars with uncompromising directness. Facile and badly orchestrated it most certainly is not, but the symphony’s derivativeness brings to mind how César Franck, in a fit of frustration, scrawled “poison” across the title page of his copy of the score to Tristan und Isolde, so threatened was he (and many other French composers) by the force of Wagner’s style, which he feared would reduce him to a mere imitator. If the Soviet cartoon of “Shostakovich clones” that graces the cover of the book Shostakovich In Context is any indication, the Russian symphonist’s music was similarly believed by at least some of his contemporaries to be a stifling influence on younger composers. Even those who emerged into maturity with a distinctive style haven’t been safe. One is reminded of the lamentable decline in Krzysztof Penderecki’s music after his Symphony No. 1. A few, like Tigran Mansurian or Boris Tchaikovsky, came under the influence of Shostakovich, but also possessed the willpower and strength of personality to resist being subsumed by it, instead forging ahead with their own highly individual idioms.

Ian McDonald perceptively noted in his The New Shostakovich—by way of critique of his subject’s Symphony No. 8—that composers whom he considered, like Penderecki, to be the elder’s epigones were “one-dimensional.”

“The tragic earnestness is laid on too thickly and too monotonously; there is little sense of perspective; and no ironic contrast, characterisation, or humor.”

He could very well have been describing Weinberg’s Symphony No. 2 which—at least to me—swings a heavy black brush relentlessly against its canvas in a manner which Shostakovich himself rarely indulged in. Worse it (and by extension most of Weinberg’s music) has little of the structural tightness, rhythmic zest, and playful surprise which his mentor had to a seemingly limitless degree.

Listening to Tikhon Khrennikov’s Symphony No. 2, Op. 9 from 1942, on the other hand, proved to be a surprisingly enjoyable romp.

For most of his life, Khrennikov was best recognized at home and abroad not for his compositions, but for his over forty years as Secretary of the Union of Soviet Composers, becoming essentially the face of Soviet musical policy. As such, he was equally courted and disliked, the latter much more so and with a vengeance once his power crumbled along with the former USSR’s.

Disagreeable and reprehensible though he may possibly have been as a man, the professional quality of his music is beyond reproach, and is anything but “badly orchestrated.” Khrennikov in this symphony displayed an uncanny ear for orchestral brilliance and sparkle. (Not for nothing did Leopold Stokowski champion his Symphony No. 1 long before its composer became the top musical bureaucrat in the Soviet Union.) His thematic material is clear-cut and memorable; many more talented composers would have been envious of his ease with melody. And if it isn’t going to be setting the world afire with its originality, Khrennikov’s Symphony No. 2 is less derivative of, say, Dmitri Kabalevsky and Gavriil Popov than Weinberg’s corresponding symphony is of Shostakovich. Rhetoric about “Socialist Realism” and heroism notwithstanding, the symphony purports no metaphysical profundities which require searching beyond the music itself. It is simply an exuberant collage of marches, mass songs, and folk melodies which ingratiates itself to the listener with an appealingly abstract quality; contenting itself with being accepted at face value, and without having need of socio-political props.

Having spent over 20 years listening to Weinberg—not only his symphonies, but also his vast catalog of chamber, vocal, and piano music—I find that not only is his music mostly unable to dispense with those props, but that sweeping them away reveals nothing but the aesthetic void they had concealed. When the listener arrives at the coda of his Symphony No. 2, one comes to the uncomfortable realization that its composer’s desire to vent his emotions exceeded his ability to impose order and cogency upon them, that the sum of his good deeds in life amounts to precious little in the cold retrospective gaze of musical posterity.

On the occasion of what would have been Shostakovich’s 70th birthday, Khrennikov declared that to follow in his late colleague’s tradition was to commit to “uncompromising service to his affairs, to his calling as an artist of the socialist epoch.” That he himself—more Czerny than Shostakovich; his character streaked with a pungent Mephistophelian aroma—contradicted these lofty aims is a delicious irony that is positively, well, Shostakovichian.

A skin-deep smile for skin-deep music: Tikhon Khrennikov’s moment in the spotlight in the film The Train Goes East (1947). [Wikimedia Commons] — A skin-deep smile for skin-deep music: Tikhon Khrennikov’s moment in the spotlight in the film *The Train Goes East* (1947). [Wikimedia Commons]