This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

The story, to the extent the work has one, is simple: God gives the Antikrist a few days to wreak havoc on a sinful world, and the actual opera consists of a series of vignettes in which the minions of the Antikrist give vent to their various forms of nastiness...and order is restored in the end...it's easy to understand why many listeners will simply want to enjoy the music and leave it at that. For make no mistake, considered purely as music, this is stunning.


With characters like The Scarlet Beast, Hatred, Despondency, and (my own personal favorite) The Great Whore, how can you not love an opera like Antikrist? Langgaard was one sick puppy, and posterity can only be glad of that fact. Among his other quirks of character, he married a woman he hated in order to please his mother, walked out of the church immediately after the ceremony, and (evidently) never slept with his bride. But he also never left her. All of that was in the future when he was working on Antikrist in his early 20s, but the tension between the self-mortification, repressed but intense eroticism, and the need to affirm traditional spiritual values, makes for an explosive artistic mixture. The music takes Strauss' Salome as its starting point, but turns into something wholly original and no less gorgeous along the way to its hopeful apotheosis.

The story, to the extent the work has one, is simple: God gives the Antikrist a few days to wreak havoc on a sinful world, and the actual opera consists of a series of vignettes in which the minions of the Antikrist give vent to their various forms of nastiness. Essentially a morality play viewed from a modern angle, there isn't much action, and order is restored in the end. But the libretto is basically incomprehensible (no, that isn't a bad translation from the Danish that you are reading), and it's the music that tells that tale; not much actually happens on stage. So although the theatrical production presented at the same time as this recording was made (also available from Dacapo on DVD) did successfully realize the piece as a mesmerizing dramatic experience, it's easy to understand why many listeners will simply want to enjoy the music and leave it at that.


For make no mistake, considered purely as music, this is stunning. As with the live DVD, the performance is extraordinary and extremely well engineered to boot. There are some very fine Danish opera singers out there, including Camilla Nylund and Anna-Margrethe Dahl, both of whom made such a positive impression in Dacapo's recording of Ruder's A Handmaid's Tale--but then there are absolutely no weak links in the cast. Having made this recording in connection with live performances, all of the singers sound completely comfortable with what in fact are far from conventional parts. The orchestra under Thomas Dausgaard plays magnificently, and if you didn't get the DVD, or even if you did but want to hear the music in even more opulent sound, then this hybrid SACD is certainly the way to go. Antikrist had to wait decades for its first performance, and decades more for one truly worthy of Langgaard's warped genius; but the wait has certainly been worth it. [10/23/2006]
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Friedrich Kuhlau Was the Most Cosmopolitan Personality in Danish Music at the Beginning of the 19th Century. A Creative, Forward-Looking and Extremely Productive Composer, He Rarely Let His Pen Lie Idle. The Two Piano Quartets Recorded on This CD By the Young Copenhagen Piano Quartet Are Major Works from the Composer's Most Artistically Fertile Decade, Besides Testifying to Kuhlau's Own Brilliance As a Pianist.

This third and, sadly, last entry in Dacapo’s Riisager Symphonic Edition contains some of the best music so far, smashingly performed and recorded. The Summer Rhapsody on Danish folk melodies sounds just as advertised. It’s a jolly potpourri of catchy tunes, scored with glittering abandon. The Sinfonia concertante for string orchestra dates from 1934, and it reveals the composer’s ability to use limited resources without compromising his music’s timbal color or textural interest. A new, vigorous (indeed, relentless) rhythmic element is very evident in this piece, and it characterizes the two symphonies as well. So although they are relatively short (less than twenty minutes each), they pack quite a punch.

The Fourth Symphony, subtitled Sinfonia gaia, is actually a wartime work, its avowed cheerfulness sometimes taking on an air of desperation in the rhythmic obstinacy of its outer movements. Riisager’s Fifth Symphony also belies its title: Sinfonia serena. Scored for strings with a virtuoso timpani part, the movement titles are curious. There’s a scherzo marked “Vivace ilare” (“hilarious”), and the finale is an “Allegro spregiudicato” (“Unprejudiced allegro”), surely a first in musical history. As can hear for yourself from a sample of the second movement, the hilarity is primarily rhythmic, and once again the limited forces give no hint on paper of the actual range of tone color that Riisager actually obtains from his ensemble.

Bo Holten and the Aarhus Symphony play all of this music, most of it shamefully neglected, with unflagging energy, and that is precisely what it needs. I would not listen to the entire disc at a sitting. Riisager’s emphasis on dextrous counterpoint and intensive rhythmic interplay can be exhausting in large doses. Take each work one at a time and you’ll be delighted. The engineering, too, is superb, save perhaps for a touch of performance noise in the Sinfonia concertante. This is a splendid conclusion to a great series.

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

This second volume of Kayser symphonies makes a more favorable impression than did its companion. The First Symphony, composed in 1937/38, is the precocious work of a 19-year old. Its three compact movement play for only a bit more than sixteen minutes, and the influence of Nielsen is obvious in the work's formal shapeliness, rhythmic vitality, and freshness. The Fourth Symphony by contrast, Kayser's last, is a large piece beginning with a pastoral prelude followed by an exciting scherzo, a very long Lento (20 minutes) and a finale nearly as big. It's a major work and far finer than the Second and Third Symphonies already released. The idiom is aggressively tonal, melodic, but shot through with diatonic dissonance. Occasionally, as the notes point out, Bartók or Hindemith may come to mind, but Kayser's harmony is far more traditional than either of those composers. That big Lento is very impressively sustained, rising to a very powerful, gut-wrenching climax about three-quarters of way through. The finale meanders a bit towards the middle, but recovers in plenty of time to bring about a very satisfying conclusion--brilliant but also somewhat emotionally ambivalent.

In sum, if you're interested in good post-Romantic music than you should hear this. The performances are quite satisfying: the orchestra sounds a touch more confident than on the previous outing--perhaps the quality of the music shows them in a better light, though I do wish they would invest in a decent-sounding pair of cymbals. The engineering is good, a touch dry, with a bit more ambient performance noise than otherwise would be ideal, but it doesn't get in the way of the music. Kayser spent nearly twenty years polishing his Fourth Symphony (1945-63); it really is a most distinctive piece, and I'm sure you'll agree that it was worth the effort.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

J.P.E. Hartmann (1805-1900) composed music throughout eight decades and was greatly admired by Grieg, and a stylistic inspiration for Nordic national romanticism. Hartmann took centre stage in the wake of the old Danish masters Weyse and Kuhlau and became the prime exponent of Danish ‘national’ music. The finest examples of this can be found in among other works the remarkable piano sonatas, the masterly theatre overtures and the opera Little Kirsten, judged at the time to be the very essence of Danishness.

Some of this music has been recorded before, by BIS, but the overture and the complete Kalanus Suite aren't otherwise available. Christian Horneman (1840-1906) wrote comparatively little music, most of it for the theater, and all of it (that I've heard anyway) is of high quality. The idiom is late romantic, the melodic invention consistently attractive, the scoring colorful and ear-catching. The music leaves you wanting more. The Gurre-Suite follows the same basic story as Schoenberg's Gurrelieder, except that in this version Tove gets locked in a sauna and steamed to death rather than poisoned by the jealous queen. The four concise movements consist of an overture, a love scene, Tove's funeral procession, and a brief Entr'acte as a finale.

The other major work here is the suite from Kalanus, in five relatively substantial movements--but arguably the most fun comes from the two dances (of satyrs and a bacchanal, respectively) in "Contest with the Muses". Trust me, it's all good, and the performances are absolutely terrific, with Johannes Gustavsson encouraging his players to give their very best. Dacapo's SACD engineering is also excellent. It may be that Horneman's entire life's work can be summed up on a single CD (not necessarily a bad thing in these days of mega-boxed sets), but it's one you won't want to miss.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Danish organist and composer Gustav Helsted did not begin his musical career until he was 22 years old, at which time he enrolled in the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen. Helsted’s contemporaries viewed his writing style as modern and radical. A critic in his native Denmark wrote that he was “… a questing artist who chooses his resources with extremely discerning taste, and who may therefore seem odd and unapproachable.” This release includes the world premiere recording of Helsted’s Decet in D major. Op. 18 (1891) alongside his String Quartet in F minor, Op. 33.

“The five singers of Ars Nova Copenhagen blend beautifully in the deeply expressive Introitus and the fantastic quality of consort singing is no more notable than the touching communication of the text. Each singer performs their solo lines insightfully...this spellbinding performance is well worth acquiring.” - Gramophone Magazine, August 2010

Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen has made a name for himself as one of the most prolific northern European composers in the past half century. He was known for his unique personality and was established as a major figure in Danish musical life. Gundmundsen-Holmgreen wrote of his compositional style: “I often write music that cannot make up its mind, and that is deliberate.” This is an accurate description, as much of his music is ambiguous and provocative. He repeats motifs and sound elements without mercy, and the violent clashes of expression within the pieces are memorable. This release presents the world premiere recording of Green Ground, a unique set of pieces which were written for and dedicated to the Kronos Quartet and Theatre of Voices with conductor Paul Hillier. The works use text from Henry VIII’s Songbook and take inspiration from Baroque canons.

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REVIEWS:

Some of the most unique and hilariously raucous new music we heard all year.

– Time Out Chicago

Trying to describe the opening quartet in words—or any of his music in words—is inevitably going to fail because the music takes so many unexpected turns and practically none of them fit a verbal narrative. This is a wonderfully imaginative recording, albeit one that’s pretty far off from center.

– The Art Music Lounge (Lynn René Bayley)

Under any circumstances, a new record by the Kronos Quartet or Paul Hillier’s Theatre of Voices is worth attending to. Put the two together and that’s even more true. And now, for a couple of pieces by Danish composer Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen, base a half hour of it on “a famous old ground that (was) used by Johan Pachelbel in his well-known canon.”

In the words of notater Andrew Mellor, on top of that ground, the resultant “discourse becomes ever more complicated and outlandish and, in this case, fractious, flailing, scared and animalistic.” And, as outrageous as it is to put old Pachelbel on the run this way, it’s also exhilarating and crazily compelling. This is why it is ALWAYS necessary to keep up with what the Kronos Quartet and Hillier’s Theater of Voices do.

– Buffalo News

The obvious thing would be to say that if you love Schumann and Brahms, you'll enjoy these sonatas by Danish composer Niels Gade. You'll also be entertained if you like your ear tweaked by occasional riffs suggestive of Beethoven or even Richard Strauss (yes, I know, Strauss essentially came after Gade, but listen to the opening theme of the Sonata No. 3, or to the melody in the Sonata No. 2 finale, and see what you think!). Although written over a period of more than 40 years and showing some (small) stylistic differences, these sonatas are all similarly vigorous, exuberant works that invite the utmost expressive energy (and not a little technical savvy!) from the two performers. In the long-distant days when I studied the violin my teachers never would have suggested such pieces for devoted study--why waste your time on anything but the real Brahms or Beethoven? But my reply would now be: why not give serious attention to Gade's sonatas, all of which are very well-written for the violin (Gade was a violinist) and sound like they would be at least as much fun to play as Brahms or Beethoven?

These works have been rarely recorded, undeservedly so, and the performances here--by Christina Åstrand, who has made excellent recordings of concertos by Emil Hartmann for this same label, Ligeti, and Nørgård, and her pianist partner Per Salo (who also appears on Dacapo in Hartmann's Piano Concerto)--match the vigor and exuberance inherent in Gade's scores. The sound, especially for the violin, is somewhat close, and so is less vibrant and resonant as it might be. There is nothing new or unusual here--just some readily accessible, enlivening Classical/Romantic-style music that's artfully, skillfully, sympathetically played. Again, if you enjoy Beethoven, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Schumann...

--David Vernier, ClassicsToday.com

His instrument may have been the violin, but Niels W. Gade (1817-90) was a great admirer of piano virtuoso Felix Mendelssohn and Robert Schumann. In fact, the great Danish Romantic composer left behind a collection of piano works that inspired both professionals and amateurs. Breathing new life into a selection of these, Armenian-Danish pianist Marianna Shirinyan performs Gade's poetic "Aquarelles," the almost orchestral "Sonata in E minor", four chopin-esque "Fantasy Pieces" and the little "Chanson danoise", here in its first recording.

The German composer Friedrich Kuhlau (1786-1832) fled to Denmark as a young man and with his strong cosmopolitan personality became a loner – and at the same time a key figure – in the Danish Golden Age. Kuhlau championed new tones in Danish music, and his melodically appealing violin sonatas were the first Danish sonatas in the Romantic style. With this recording Duo Åstrand/Salo lends new luster to music that has only rarely been performed in our time.

This album marks the conclusion of Soren Nils Eichberg’s residency with the Danish National Symphony Orchestra- a fruitful cooperation that has resulted in a handful of large-scale works, born of Eichberg’s keen exploration of the orchestra. In place of the thematic formality of its predecessor, Symphony No. 3 looks far out, asking looming existential questions to which there aren’t always clear answers. As a counterweight, the even more symphonic ‘concerto for orchestra’ Morpheus revels in color and effect, brining a sense of joy and discovery to the music. Soren Nils Echberg was born in 1973 in Stuttgart, Germany, and grew up in Denmark. He was appointed the first composer in residence in the history of the Danish National Symphony Orchestra in 2010. He currently lives and works in Berlin.

REVIEW:

These are strong, exciting performances of symphonies that demand the sort of bold muscularity in their execution that these artists offer. In Alan Gilbert’s hands the First Symphony sounds extremely confident and wholly mature. It starts with a bang and the tension in the first movement never lets up. The playing of the New York Philharmonic throughout is fresh and unaffected, full of spirit and drive. Even the Andante flows purposefully forward, and contrasts nicely with the Allegro comodo that does duty for a scherzo–with its harmonic kinks so personal to Nielsen. The finale has the same “pedal to the metal” drive as the opening, bringing the performance to a rousing conclusion.

The performance of the “Inextinguishable” Fourth Symphony also features some really impressive energy and power. In the first movement the brass play with a precision and clarity that few other versions can match, and in the finale the dueling timpani compete with real bravura. The slow movement here reminds me of Shostakovich in its bleak intensity, and my only quibble with Gilbert’s interpretation concerns the symphony’s coda where, like most of his colleagues, Gilbert broadens the pace in the closing bars when Nielsen clearly wants to drive the music home in tempo. Gilbert does pull it off: with an orchestra that has the weight and strength of the New York Philharmonic the effect is convincing, but Gibson (on Chandos) remains unmatched here.

Dacapo’s engineering, as with the previous release in this series, is natural and very present. The woodwinds feel just slightly recessed in more fully scored sections, but I can attest that the music really does sound like this in actual performance with a large orchestra, and certainly nothing gets lost. More importantly, the engineers have captured the impression of a live performance, caught on the wing, and the audience is mercifully quiet. This is a very impressive release.

– David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

As the notes point out, Buxtehude "never held a position that required him to compose vocal music," but as these works show, he was no stranger to the practice, writing for the voice with adept concision that shows a remarkably wide expressive range and engaging tunefulness. The works are not complex by any means, and employ a minimal contingent of strings and/or organ just sufficient to support and add color to the vocal parts, and to supply textural and occasional imitative or contrasting thematic interest.

These little cantatas--each lasting between five and eight minutes--feature four or five voices (in one case, only a solo singer), with texts in Latin or (in two instances) Swedish, drawn from the Psalms or religious poetry. In addition to the cantatas--and a welcome organ Praeludium and Passacaglia--we hear the Kyrie and Gloria of a Missa alla brevis, Buxtehude's "only strictly liturgical work"; the extraordinary and delightfully surprising chromatic passages in the final few pages of the Gloria make this one of the program's more memorable--and immediately repeatable--moments.

Paul Hillier's one-voice-to-a-part configuration works very well for these pieces whose style often seems closer to the earlier 17th-century Italian madrigal than to northern European church music of the late 1600s (the opening vocal flourishes and overall expressive character of "Ecce nunc benedicite Domino", for instance). All of these singers are excellent, but among them Else Torp is particularly fine in her solo-cantata "Att du Jesu vill mig höra" (That you will hear me, Jesus). The instrumental ensemble and continuo playing, as well as the solo-organ renditions by Buxtehude expert Bine Bryndorf, are equally stylish and assured--and everything is recorded in state-of-the-art sound, from the church of St. Mary's, Elsinore (Helsingør), where Buxtehude once served as organist, and who played the (now restored) instrument heard here.

--David Vernier, ClassicsToday.com