Scandinavian Rarities # 2

Hi there, loyal readers -- sorry it's taken me so long to get back here for the second installment of this little mini-series. 

Ask most music lovers to name two Norwegian Romantic composers, and this is what you will likely get in answer:

[1]  Edvard Grieg
[2]  uhhhh....

This is especially unfortunate, because Grieg's art (masterful as it became) was strongly tilted towards the production of small character pieces and songs.  In this kind of musical lyricism he was truly unequalled.  But the composition of larger musical structures was not his métier.  Apart from the famous Piano Concerto, there is an early symphony of relatively little interest (to me at any rate) and that's about all.  Almost all of Grieg's most noteworthy musical inspirations tell their tale within a span of five minutes or less.

I'm making a point of this reality, because Grieg himself regarded today's composer as his natural counterpart, excelling in the larger symphonic structures which Grieg himself preferred to leave to others.

The saddest point of this story is that Johan Svendsen's composing career came to a premature end after a quarrel with his wife led to her burning the manuscript of his Third Symphony.  He simply lacked the motivation to re-write it from memory, and just dried up as a creator of new music.  For the rest of his career he scored notable successes as a conductor, but composed nothing.

If that story sounds familiar, it may be because you've seen or read Ibsen's play Hedda Gabler.  The quarrel and burning story made the rounds of artistic circles in Oslo (then called Kristiania) and Ibsen put the incident almost unaltered into his newest play!

So, today's recording contains the two existing Symphonies and a Polonaise for orchestra.  The symphonies have been recorded before, but certainly not often, nor are they likely to be known to most music lovers outside of Norway.  The Polonaise is a premiere recording.

The first thing that strikes you right at the opening bar of the Symphony No. 1 in D Major, Op. 4 is the sheer energy and driving force of the music.  This is a work that hits the ground running and keeps right on going.  If the opening theme perhaps sounds a bit naïve, it's worth remembering that opus number and realizing that Svendsen was still a young man (age 25) when he wrote it in 1865.  In the first minute he has already given a balancing second statement to the first one, and begun to put the first few bars through a fugato passage.  This movement is nothing if not eventful!

The succeeding slow movement is imbued with poetic sounds of the horns.  The scherzo brings us into the world of folk music, mixing it with a kind of mock-Mozart ambience in a very winning combination.  The finale opens with a slow introduction which accelerates into another energetic burst of good-natured melody.  Again, as in the first movement, the music surges onward at speed, with occasional cross-rhythms to add spice to the mixture.

The Symphony No. 2 in B flat major, Op. 15 was composed eleven years after No. 1, and surprisingly shows not as much development as you might expect.  Does that matter, when the music is just as zippy and ingratiating as its predecessor?  The first movement is composed in an energetic triple time, which produces memorable musical ideas with as much flair as many of Dvorak's first movements.  The succeeding slow movement also reminds me of Dvorak. 

The Intermezzo third movement is inspired by the Halling or Springdans, a Norwegian folk dance which calls for the dancers to leap frequently into the air.  The bass line is a kind of drone bass familiar from many of Grieg's dance inspirations, but here less overtly reminiscent of the droning understrings on the Norwegian Hardanger fiddle.  The finale again has a dark slow introduction, but this soon speeds up into another brightly-lit, high-spirited finale with a main theme which anticipates by two decades one of the dances in Act 1 of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker.

The Polonaise No. 2, Op. 28 is a suitable encore to the two symphonies, with the classic polonaise rhythm underlying another characteristically bright and cheerful string of melodies.  The central trio is charmingly scored for flute and strings, a good contrast to the grandiose ending of the main theme.

Again, thanks to the Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra under Thomas Dausgaard for another sparkling collection of music that deserves to be heard, and heard often, not neglected on a dusty library shelf.  The full, warm Chandos sound again presents this music most effectively.