Nielsen: Symphony No. 2, Symphony No. 4

Copy at Case Memorial Library
Alex Ross wrote in the New Yorker: "With savage concentration, Nielsen proceeds to hack apart … and rev up his catchy little tunes. … As in the case of Janácek and Bartók, the other leading folk-modernists of the early twentieth century, Nielsen seamlessly fused his 'peasant' and 'urban' selves. His habit of flattening the third and seventh notes of the major scale harks back to folk modes, yet it also allows for rapid-fire modulations and polymorphous key schemes. Players need to believe fervently in this music if they are to bring it fully to life. Each phrase must trigger the next in a kind of chain reaction. The difference is clear when you go from, say, the Berlin Philharmonic’s solemn, square-footed 1981 recording of the Fourth Symphony, under the direction of Herbert von Karajan, to a series of live recordings that the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra made in the nineteen-fifties. The conductors … aren’t household names, but they elicit playing of reckless passion. (… There is also an outstanding CD of the Second and the Fourth on RCA, with Jean Martinon and Morton Gould conducting the Chicago Symphony.)" (2/25/08)