Langgaard is being thoroughly advocated by DaCapo. Here, after a pause of three years, is the second volume of their project to record Langgaard's complete music for violin and piano.

Apart from the Aubade all the works here are from 1949 when Langgaard’s composing took place between 3 a.m. and 7 a.m. each day. The scores are both dated and timed. Only the Aubade was published in his lifetime. The notes are by Langgaard guru, Bendt Viinholt Nielsen who has done so much for this composer. As he points out the 1949 works all bear the stigmata of Langgaard's infatuation with the three sonatas by Schumann and the violin sonata of César Franck.

The music is expressively caught in full and ripely singing flood buffeted by cross-currents from Tchaikovsky and Brahms. One can distinguish similar singing qualities in the early chamber pieces of Frank Bridge, John Foulds and Gabriel Fauré. While the Third Sonata is in songful spate the Fourth is more consolatory-reflective - like early Delius. It becomes gradually more stormy and dynamic in the Scherzo and Presto furioso. The (very) Short Sonata is much the same though plagued with black moods and storm cloud. Ecrasez l'Infâme is in five movements stylistically of a piece with the Fourth Sonata at first but then blowing away the cobwebs with violent assaults from the keyboard. This is almost the stuff of which Antheil, Ornstein and Cowell were made in the teens of the last century. The violin stays comparatively true to its romantically singing soul. Both the Aubade and the Andante Religioso are sweetly meditative - profoundly serious in their focus on beauty.

Anyone who relishes the Delius Violin Concerto and can imagine the style leavened by Schumann, Franck and early Fauré must get this very fine disc.

Rob Barnett

 

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