RUED LANGGAARD: SYMPHONIES 2 AND 3; SYMPHONIES 12 TO 14

Danish National Symphony Orchestra and Choir, conducted by Thomas Dausgaard. DaCapo 6.220516 and 6.220517.

DURING an oft-cited 1907 meeting between the two most important symphonists of the 20th century, one of them, Jean Sibelius, spoke of the symphony’s “severity” and the logic with which motifs were interconnected. “No!” the other, Gustav Mahler, responded, according to Sibelius. “The symphony must be like the world. It must be all-embracing.”

The symphonies of the Danish composer Rued Langgaard suggest a third path: one of obstinacy and a touch of perversity. Born in 1893, Langgaard was trained in music by his parents, both professional players. He enjoyed a measure of early success when, thanks to family connections, the Berlin Philharmonic gave the premiere of his hourlong Symphony No. 1 in 1913.

World War I put an end to Langgaard’s German prospects, while in Denmark, where Carl Nielsen was shifting from late Romanticism to a mature Neo-Classical style, Langgaard’s prescient experimental pieces like the orchestral work “Music of the Spheres” and the opera “Antikrist” were met with hostility.

Around 1924 Langgaard repudiated modernism — as well as Nielsen, the Danish musical establishment and pretty much everything else. He spent the rest of his career writing in a strangely anachronistic idiom redolent of Schumann and Wagner, spiked with a defiant formal unpredictability. Only half of Langgaard’s 16 symphonies were performed in his lifetime.

Thomas Dausgaard, a Danish conductor whose New York appearances at the Mostly Mozart Festival have drawn praise, is working his way through an authoritative new Langgaard cycle with the Danish National Symphony Orchestra and Choir, ensembles maintained by Danish Radio. Two recent volumes from DaCapo offer works from either side of this composer’s stylistic schism.

One includes Symphony No. 2, “Varbrud” (“Awakening of Spring”), recorded in its uncut original version for the first time. The work, composed from 1912 to 1914, is a sumptuous sprawl filled with intimations of Beethoven and Wagner, ending with an effusive setting for soprano of a poem by Emil Rittershaus. Symphony No. 3, written in 1915-16 and revised from 1925 to 1933, is actually a red-blooded piano Romantic concerto with a wordless choral finale. Inger Dam-Jensen sings radiantly in the first work; Per Salo is the capable pianist in the second.

For all their peculiarity the later symphonies on a companion volume remain eminently approachable. Symphony No. 12, from 1946, is something of a bleak private joke, as if Langgaard had somehow boiled down his epic first symphony into seven minutes. The conclusion, a pointed outburst, is labeled “Amok! A composer explodes.”

Symphony No. 13, “Undertro” (“Belief in Wonders”), was composed in 1946-47, but its bold fanfares and bucolic strains might have come from the previous century. Its successor, Symphony No. 14, “Morgenen” (“The Morning”), is brighter still: a choral symphony entirely composed in major keys.

A glorious opening hymn is followed by a mesmerizing meditation for strings. Evocations of the everyday, denoted by quirky titles like “Radio-Caruso and forced energy” and “‘Dads’ rush to the office,” culminate in a final vocal paean: “Long live beauty.” On both discs Mr. Dausgaard’s keen advocacy elicits polished, persuasive accounts that live up to that motto.

[ via nytimes.com ]

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