The Launy Grøndahl Legacy Volume 3 – HC Anderson Jubilee Concert 1955
Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra/Launy Grøndahl
rec. 1950-57
Translations included
DANACORD DACOCD883 [70:38 + 63:04]
In no time at all we have reached the third volume in Danacord’s tribute to conductor and composer Launy Grøndahl (1886-1960) who for three decades from its inception in 1925 led the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra. The laudable intention is to release every surviving example of his studio and broadcast legacy.
The core of this twofer is formed by two live concerts, the earlier dating from 1 April 1955 and the later from 5 May 1957. The remainder of the programme offers programmatically relevant examples taken from his HMV recordings. The 1955 concert was the Hans Christian Andersen Jubilee Concert with well selected pieces to explore the writer’s creative influence on his countrymen’s music-making. Thus, we hear from some less well-known composers as well as their august better known near contemporaries. August Enna would, I suppose, fall into the former category, though his operatic works still compel enthusiasm. The Overture to The Little Match Girl dates from 1897 and is burnished with ardent expressive strings and horns and makes for a ripely late-Romantic six minutes. Niels Gade’s Agnete and the Mermaids – she is the famous girl in bronze under Copenhagen’s Højbro Bridge – follows, a compact and most attractive setting for soloist, chorus and orchestra the origin of which lay in incidental music Gade had written years before. The mezzo is the marvelous Else Brems who worked frequently with Grøndahl from the 1930s onwards.
Riisager was exceptionally creative when it came to small-scale pieces and is represented by two appropriately small-scaled month sketches (August and October) from Twelve with Mail - Baroque revisited with delicious twists. If you prefer a more expansive piece – this concert was full of interest in that respect – turn to Finn Høffding’s 1940 Symphonic Fantasy No.2 called It’s Quite True! and which was based on Anderson poking fun at Chinese Whispers in his 1852 work There Is No Doubt About It. If you are looking for witty repartee, including a fugato, lashings of orchestral incident and fast, fiery and noisy fun, then this is the piece for you - and the conductor delivers with a riotously controlled piece of direction. Composer, violinist, and ubiquitous figure Fini Henriques is represented by a whip-crack dance – it’s a very fast dance, don’t try dancing to it - Livsglædens Dans (The Dance of the Joy of Life) from a ballet score.
Finally, from this concert, there is the only piece that might cause language impediments, The Tinder Box, a 16-minute piece for narrator and orchestra by the Nielsen pupil Poul Schierbeck. Fortunately, Danacord, as it does in the case of Agnete and the Mermaids, prints the English translation (not the original) in its booklet so you can follow the story. The score is spry, lightly textured with plenty of colour and narrator Morgens Wieth is a lively, witty presence, getting big laughs along the way. The remainder of the first disc is devoted to those commercial 78s. Gade’s sonorous and majestic concert overture Echoes of Ossian was a standard work for conductor and orchestra, and one whose rich, turbulent Mendelssohnian aspirations are richly brought out here. In the Blue Grotto was the filler to the last side of Ossian – lovely and languorous. HC Lumbye’s Dream Pictures closes the commercial catalogue. Composed in 1846 it’s not a waltz but is a ravishingly beautiful portrait with hints of Beethoven’s Pastoral and with time for a glockenspiel solo.
Disc two preserves the 1957 concert broadcast, presumably in its entirety. The music is more challenging and contemporary and just as well played. Peder Gram’s Intrada seria is suffused with colour and antique cadences, shot through with sinewy control. The Freedom Overture of Henning Wellejus was written in 1945 to mark Denmark’s liberation and it veers from light to dark, takes in a percussion battle and then admits an elysian baroque passage that prefigures a fugal section. Wellejus quotes Jeremiah Clarke’s The Prince of Denmark’s March, which was used in Denmark as a signature tune to announce the World Service news on Danish radio and was a theme of morale-rising strength. Wellejus’ piece is powerful and all-embracing, ending in a glorious peroration. The longest piece in the twofer is Ebbe Hamerik’s Variations, composed in 1933 or, to give it its full, unwieldy, translated title, Variations for Orchestra over the Danish State Radio Signal, dedicated to The Listener. This is a series of variations on the earliest known Danish folk melody, taut, finely characterised, moving from introspection to lightly swaying dance patterns and moving through the almost inevitable fugue to a rousing conclusion. Langgaard’s At the Death of Edvard Grieg reflects, to some extent, how much Grøndahl did, here and elsewhere, for a composer who was frequently shunned. Incidentally, his piece was written before Nielsen’s At the Bier of a Young Artist. Langgaard’s piece is overwhelmingly powerful, Trauermusik of passionate conviction, a Wagnerian cortege of unmistakable intensity. Then follows the first performance of Walther Schrøder’s Salzburg Overture. Schrøder had worked with Grøndahl when they’d both been members of a Casino orchestra. This is an extrovert piece full of skittering percussion and with room for a saucy trumpet motif or two; quite traditional – which is no bad thing - and worth a listen. Finally, we have Svend Schultz’s overture to his 1950 opera Thunderstorm. Schultz was the long-serving choral director of the Danish Radio Choir and the overture is appositely stormy and aptly contoured.
Martin Granau’s booklet notes are hot off the press and full of pertinent detail. Read them carefully as you listen and you will learn a lot, as I did. Full marks too, once again, to the tireless Claus Byrith for his fine transfers. Almost everything here is apparently making a first ever appearance on disc – the exceptions are Gade’s Echoes of Ossian, and In the Blue Grotto and Lumbye’s Dream Pictures – as these are all commercial HMV 78s.
After the flurry of three volumes I hope there’s not too long a wait for the next one in this exciting series.
Jonathan Woolf
Contents
CD 1
Niels W. GADE (1817-1890)
Efterklange af Ossian (Echoes of Ossian), Concert Overture, Op. 1 (1840) [13:46]
Agnete og Havfruerne (Agnete and the Mermaids), Op. 3 [7:13]
Else Brems (soprano)/The Danish Radio Choir
I den Blaa Grotte (In the Blue Grotto) - from the ballet "Napoli" (1842) [10:05]
August ENNA (1859-1939)
Overture to the opera "Den lille Pige med Svovlstikkerne" (The Little Match Girl), Op. 12 (1897) [6:01]
Knudåge RIISAGER (1897-1974)
From Tolv med Posten (Twelve with the Mail), Op. 37 (1942); August [1:41] October [1:28]
Finn HØFFDING (1899-1997)
Det er Ganske vist (It’s Quite True!); Symphonic Fantasy No. 2 (1940) [8:14]
H. C. LUMBYE (1810-1874)
Drømmebilleder (Dream Pictures) (1846) [8:10]
Fini HENRIQUES (1867-1940)
Livsglædens Dans (The Dance of the Joy of Life) from the ballet "Den lille Havfrue" (The little Mermaid) (1920) [3:13]
Poul SCHIERBECK (1888-1949)
Fyrtøjet (The Tinder Box), Op. 61 (1942) [16:02]
Mogens Wieth (narrator)
CD 2
Peder GRAM (1881-1956)
Intrada seria, Op. 34 (1946) [6:55]
Henning WELLEJUS (1919-2002)
Det har slet ingen hast for den, der tror (Haste is not for him that believeth): Frihedsouverture (Freedom Overture), Op. 13 (1945) [9:57]
Ebbe HAMERIK (1898-1951)
Orkestervariationer over det danske Statsradiofonisignal tilegnet Lytteren (Variations for Orchestra over the Danish State Radio Signal, dedicated to The Listener) (1933) [20:03]
Rued LANGGAARD (1893-1952)
Drapa. Ved Edvard Griegs Død (At the Death of Edvard Grieg), BVN 20 (1907-09) [6:46]
Walther SCHRØDER (1895-1976)
Salzburg Overture (1955) [11:49]
Svend S. SCHULTZ (1913-1998)
Overture to the opera "Tordenvejret" (Thunderstorm) (1950) [7:02]
