It’s a great relief that Bendt Viinholt Nielsen’s helpful and
detailed liner-notes clearly list the dates, keys and numberings of
Langgaard’s quartets which are quite mixed and complicated. The reason for
this is that some are not numbered, and No. 1 was rejected but parts were
re-used as happened a little in other works. This is the middle disc of a
set that aims to record all nine works for the medium although the DaCapo
list has ten. Sadly and annoyingly I completely missed
Volume 1, which was so well reviewed and
contained Quartets 2, 3, 6 and the ‘O Sacred Head’ variations.
The grouping here binds around the title ‘The Rosengård Quartets’. As a
twenty-year-old innocent the young Rued holidayed in Kyrkhult, a little Spa
town, here he met his first and passionate love, a certain Dora. This
experience sparked at least six works including these quartets. The opening
work is entitled
Rose Garden Play (
Rosengaardsspil). The
period between 1914 and 1925 not only saw the creation of most of the
quartets but of many other fine works such as the masterly Sixth
Symphony.
Back in the mid-1990s I bought a double album of Langgaard’s quartets (
DaCapo DCD9302) and it’s interesting that of the six pieces on
their discs the Kontra Quartet did not record the listed No. 1. This was
probably because the material was re-used in the Fourth Quartet, subtitled
Summer Days (Sommerdage). It’s also interesting that with each
movement they are so much faster and less relaxed but sunnier. I’d never
thought much about this before but on hearing the four young women of the
Nightingale Quartet I now think that this new version has more character and
virtue especially in the slow music of movement three. That said, it’s worth
adding, and the Kontra’s clearly noted the fact, that Langgaard writes
‘Scherzoso’ for each of the movements. Perhaps however the composer wanted
to communicate a sense of lightness and not jokiness. Anyway both versions
surely pass the test. This is a late–romantic work although never sickly or
too inward-looking.
The unnumbered quartet entitled
Rose Garden Play was effectively
Langgaard’s fourth. Its first movement is identical to that of the above,
real Fourth Quartet and its finale is just a shorter version of the
more developed finale of the Fourth. The middle movements consist of a
delightful
Scherzoso, which is subtitled
Mozart, obviously
neo-classical, and then a deeply felt
Tranquillo dolente third
movement given the title ‘Drop fall’ presumably because of its constantly
falling theme. One can’t help but hear, in both of these works, various
hymnal textures; Langgaard was originally famed as an organist and an
improviser. Ironically and curiously it was only when he was 47 that he
secured an organist position and that in the ancient but small town of Ribe
with its superb cathedral.
Stylistically Langgaard can be hard to pin down and this might be the main
problem as to why he was so rarely played. We like our composers to be
generally consistent so that we can pigeonhole them. Some of you might know
some of Langgaard’s experimental late symphonies.
Perhaps though, Langgaard failed to number his 1918 A flat Quartet,
effectively his fifth in the medium, because he felt, in its neo-classical
manner, that it lacked a strong individual character. It could almost have
been written a hundred years previous. In the first two movements
especially, Schubert or Beethoven are a strong presence. The second movement
Scherzando is pleasing but no more than that. The third movement –
Lento dolente - is a C minor funeral march but this, starting
pizzicato has many beautiful and reflective passages, and seem to be more
Langgaard than anyone else. The fourth movement begins as an earnest
Allegro agitato but the quite lengthy ensuing
tranquillo
moves into a more Twentieth Century melancholia that is very touching.
Plenty to enjoy on this disc, not least the ideally sympathetic
performances. There is also much that is frustrating and the occasionally
excessive sentimental nostalgia can outstay its welcome. In some movements
there is a lack of what one has come to discover in other works as the
composer’s true originality. Even so I shall look out for the third volume.
If it’s played and recorded as superbly as this then one need not worry that
the financial outlay will deliver musical value.
Gary Higginson
Previous review: Byzantion
