First time on CD new recordings of piano works of Danish-American pianist-composer Gunnar Johansen, best known as a pianist but also a prolific composer for his instrument, including 2 of Johansen's piano sonatas, and shorter pieces from 1928 to 1977. Young American pianist Solon Pierce is the leading authority on the music of Gunnar Johansen and knew the composer well. His extensive booklet notes with many rare photos only enhances the importance of this CD.

Broadcast performances of the Fifth and Sixth symphonies complete a Sibelius cycle within the Thomas Jensen collection on Danacord. Their dramatic sweep and control demonstrate the conductor’s special affinity with this music, which he played under the composer’s direction as a cellist. Jensen worked tirelessly for Danish composers throughout his career; this volume includes newly published performances of works by three composers, now almost unknown outside their home country, who emerged from the shadow cast by Carl Nielsen to write in a distinctively individual but still quintessentially Danish idiom.

Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg (18431907) is famous for compositional masterpieces in a variety of different genres, such as piano concerto, orchestral suites, short piano pieces, and songs. Yet Grieg wrote curiously little instrumental chamber music. In fact, only six compositions for chamber music constellations exist, counting also the incomplete string quartet in F major. The violin sonatas thus make up half of his chamber music output, and all three sonatas are important contributions to the repertoire for violin and piano duo. No. 3, the C minor sonata, is widely considered one of Grieg's greatest works, and its tremendous popularity has indeed tended to overshadow the recognition of his two earlier works throughout the reception history of Grieg’s oeuvre.

First recording of Danish Piano Music. Louis Glass was born in 1864. His childhood home was full of music. His father, Christian Henrik Glass, was a prominent and highly recognised music educator whose primary instrument was the piano, though he was also an organist. In 1877, he founded his own music conservatory, which focused on piano playing and soon gained a good reputation. The piano works of Louis Glass make up a significant part of his collected works. Aside from arrangements of orchestral works in different piano editions, the many two-handed piano pieces appear as either single movements or as part of collections. The collections of piano works include no fewer than 12 opus numbers with a total of 75 movements from Glass’ entire output.

Vol. 5 of American Piano Music. The Anthology of American Piano Music is designed to show the stylistic breadth, high musical quality, and great originality of the best American piano works. The series contains underrated, neglected or forgotten masterworks of the American literature for solo piano from the 18th to the 21st century that have been selected primarily for their musical worth and originality. The com- positions are assembled in a series of themed CDs, their programs being connected by one common theme or overarching idea. Vol. 1, "American First Sonatas", comprises the first piano sonatas by four American composers from different periods, including the very first sonata ever composed in North America. Vol. 2, ‘Music of the Night’, a 2 CD album, assembles a selection of American nocturnes and other piano works related to the theme of Night, while Vol. 3, 'American Landscapes', includes three complete cycles of character pieces and eight stand-alone works featuring musical impressions from North American landscapes. Vol.4 contains the complete set of compositions for piano and orchestra by George Gershwin. The present CD (Vol.5, "American Dances") is a compilation of works for solo piano that are related to the theme of Dance.

An all Danish cast brings native authority to this ‘superbly conducted’ (Gramophone) account of Nielsen’s first opera in a broadcast recording from 1960. The substantial bonus is new to the Thomas Jensen discography: a first-ever release for Spoon River Anthology, Helge Bonnén’s Danish settings of American poetry that reflects on the vicissitudes of life and death in a poor and rural community.

Greatest ever Danish pianist in concert - His activities as a soloist and his increasingly comprehensive work as a teacher were central to his ?nal years from about 1950 until his death in 1967. Here I am thinking not only of his teaching as a professor at the conservatoire, but even more of his efforts to stimulate and encourage interest in classical music. One of his tools was television. TV was completely new. Many people were interested in it, and in Denmark only one channel was available. This was Danmarks Radio, which only transmitted a few hours daily. It opened up a unique opportunity for Schiøler to gain access to “the general public” in this way. There were many broadcasts which had the title “About the Piano” in common. In this series the sound track of Schubert’s Wanderer Fantasy has already been included in Vol 4. Besides the music, viewers could also hear Schiøler’s eloquent, inspiring and appealing introductions. Volume 6 also includes an example from these broadcasts. Schiøler introduces and talks about Saint-Saëns’ Variations for two pianos on a theme of Beethoven. The theme is the trio from the minuet in the Sonata in E?at, op. 31 no. 3. The variations make considerable demands on the two pianists, who constantly cast little bits of the theme to each other which they then have to grab in such a way that it never affects the pulse and continuity of the music. It demands perfect synchronization between the two players, here Schiøler and his pupil Peter Westenholz (1937 – 2008). And it is a joy to listen to them playing together! The recording was made in Schiøler’s own home on his two Hornung og Møller concert grands.

Leading Danish tenor in Lieder by Schubert – The Danish tenor Mathias Hedegaard has appeared with The Royal Danish Opera, The Danish National Opera, Gothenburg Opera, Tiroler Landestheater Innsbruck, Malmo¨ Opera, New Belgrade Opera and The Funen Opera. His roles include Orfeo (Monteverdi), Acis in Acis and Galatea, Tamino in The Magic Flute, Male Chorus in The Rape of Lucretia, Candide (Bernstein) and Leander in Carl Nielsen's Maskarade. With his strong stage charisma, he has created roles in several world premieres by Scandinavian composers. Mathias Hedegaard is a sought after concert singer and his interpretation of the Evangelist in Bach's Passions has won international recognition. Mathias Hedegaard is the finest interpreter of Danish Art Songs of his generation. In 2021 Mathias Hedegaard and Tove Lønskov won the Danish Broadcasting Corporation P2-Award as “Best Classical Album of the Year” for the CD-recording of Schuberts Winterreise released on Danacord.

Doyen of Danish Pianists Professor John Damgaard – As a young student I had the pleasure to play Francis Poulenc’s Sextet for Nadia Boulanger. Feeling uneasy with some of the more or less banal themes I asked for her help. She said that Poulenc had a strong sense of humor, but always expressed it in an extremely serious way – which made it even more humorous. And you had to treat his music in the same manner. Always serious. Poulenc’s musical life was at a time, where the tonal system more or less had outlived itself. The 12-tone music had taken over. At least in the Germanic musical world. But Poulenc detested this form of intellectual way of making music. Music had to be conceived through the ear.

In 1943, when he wrote his Intermezzo in A-?at major, he ended the piece with 12 chords in all the keys...probably an ironic greeting to the Germans in Paris! Already in 1928, he showed - in one of his most beautiful pieces - the Pastorale - that it is possible through the ear to make beautiful chords containing almost all the 12 different notes at the same time. Beautiful sonority has always been a major key to French Music. Many years later Pierre Boulez said “I wish I could compose in major/minor keys. But I can’t!” Another of his beautiful pieces the Mélancolie is written in August 1940 – 3 months after the Germans went into Paris. Leonard Bernstein suggested in one of his Harvard Lectures that the interval of a downward third is an archetype. In all cultures that means “mother”! Mélancolie ends with a downward third 3 times – a definite cry for help. With these elements in consideration, it is totally wrong to judge Poulenc a light weight French composer – which has often been the case. He is much more an original, serious French composer with a lot of humor.

Clara Schumann and Lili Boulanger – Duo Bols & Bjørkøe – The Duo Bols and Bjørkøe have their fifth anniversary in 2022. They met each other at Holmen's Church in Copenhagen where they were both soloists at a Niels W. Gade concert celebration that was broadcast on the Danish National Radio. Since then, the duo has played multiple concerts throughout Denmark. In 2020, the Roskilde Music Association encouraged the duo to perform a program consisting only of female composers, a program that was also recorded for the Danish National Radio. This program became the basis for the repertoire on this CD. The duo most recently performed a concert for Hjørring Music Association with previously unknown songs by the Danish composer Nancy Dalberg, a concert which was also broadcast on the Danish National Radio. The duo is already planning to record these songs in the near future.

Danish conductor Emil Reesen — The composer and conductor Emil Reesen (1887-1964) was the remarkable Jack-of-all-trades of Danish music who mastered all genres and styles – the only thing that mattered to him was that the quality of the music was good. His career began in the world of the theatre, where he played the piano in music theatres in Copenhagen and as time went on also began to conduct, arrange and compose music for various operettas and revues. And he was really good at this. During the years around the First World War Reesen came to the conclusion that he was the best conductor in town despite not having studied at the conservatoire. The decisive thing was his considerable innate talent.

"Although the horn has some obstacles to overcome, [...] nature seems to have intended it by and large for singing; moreover, the horn player can draw the best lessons from the school of a good singer. There he learns the art of good phrasing and proper breathing; there he purifies his taste, shapes his style, and ultimately discovers all he needs to know to capture the listener's attention, move him, and - on many occasions - stir his enthusiasm.” (JosephÉmile Meifred: Méthode pour le Cor chromatique ou à pistons, Paris 1840) Solo horn player in the Danish Royal orchestra Claudio Flückiger is here presenting what is the art of playing the horn. He is accompanied by pianist Galya Kolarova.

In Ravel’s output, themes of Classical order and choreographic gesture run parallel to a sensibility in touch with the macabre and grotesque. All these aspects of his music are illustrated by the second volume of Oleg Marshev’s Ravel survey, from the elegance of the Sonatine to the vertiginous fantasy of Gaspard de la Nuit. ‘Marshev is a phenomenon’ BBC Music Magazine.

Three major additions to the Grøndahl discography, newly recovered from the archives of Danish radio, remastered from the original tapes and released here for the first time. Beethoven’s Violin Concerto and the first two movements of Schubert’s ‘Great’ C major Symphony confirm what an exhilarating interpreter Grøndahl was of the Austro-German classics. A Danish-language version of Rimsky-Korsakov’s neoclassically styled tragi-comedy on the subject of Mozart and Salieri complements a celebrated account of Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto, given on the occasion of Grøndahl’s belated UK debut in September 1951.

Svend Simon Schultz (1913-1998) is one of the most remarkable Danish composers and as a conductor he made a significant contribution to Danish songs, not least during his 30 years as head of the Danish Radio Chamber Choir. He was constantly composing and wrote music for movies, chamber ensemble and especially for choir. Svend S. Schultz made a stamp on Danish choral music which is still beaming today. His songs are known by every Dane and his production probably one of the most encompassing of all Danish composers. This is the first of a project to record all his nearly 90 choral songs, all of them musically and technically on the highest possible level. The brilliant Akademisk Kor Århus, conducted by Jonas Rasmussen, is now presenting volume 1 of 5 volumes. Each with a mix of songs and all with the full texts of the poems in the booklet.