Danish Romantic composer JPE Hartmann was born 1805 and lived nearly to be 100 years. During his time he was the most influential composer in Denmark and wrote beautiful music for solo piano. Here Danish pianist Thomas Trondhjem has reached the fourth volume in this enterprising series. Thomas Trondhjem (born 1954 in Lemvig, Denmark) was in January 1990 appointed teacher in piano and accompaniment at the Music Academy of Jutland West and 2004 appointed ass. professor of piano and accompaniment at The Royal Academy of Music in Aarhus, Denmark. He studied at The Royal Academy of Music, Aarhus with Poul La Cour and finished his studies with a debut concert in 1985. The concert received brilliant reviews and rewarded Thomas Trondhjem with a Diploma with the highest grade. Trondhjem often gives solo recitals showing his immense repertoire, mainly from the classical period, the romantic period plus the composers of the 20th century.

1805-1847 were a short time to live for the very talented sister of Felix. History aimed the spotlight on the brother, not without justice, for he was a musical genius and to many an icon. His sister, Fanny, who later married and took the last name Hensel, often played four-hand with brother Felix, she was a fine singer and music came as natural to her as to her brother. Sadly time only allowed her too few compositions, but what we have today should be much more appreciated. The 12 piano pieces, each for every month of the year surely could have been composed by Felix and they lack nothing in brilliance, musicality and pianistic virtuosity. Leading Danish pianist Christina Bjørkøe gives a splendid performance.

Founded in 1987 the annual Rarities of Piano Music Festival in the North German town of Husum is a major event. Danacord is proud to release the recording from the extra festival from June 3-5, 2022. Due to Covid-19 the planned 2020 festival had to cancelled and an extra short three day festival came in June this year. As a theme the music was all around Alkan. Listen to Marc-André Hamelin, Artur Pizzaro, Claire Hammond and other fine pianists performing rare piano music. All lovers of piano music will want this release, not only because of the first class pianism from truly outstanding performers, but also because the quality of the often unknown and rare mostly romantic piano music is of such invaluable substance. Critics greeted all the previous releases with enthusiasm.

The contents of this album present the piano pieces in the music book “For all Ages”, published by Edition Wilhelm Hansen. “I am totally self-taught and do not compose according to rules. I am only using my ears. Little ideas come to me constantly and if I am lucky to have pencil and music paper at hand, I just write it down. After that I turn to all the other part of the work. Many of the pieces in this collection are obviously simple. There is a reason for that: I hardly can play the piano. But that doesn’t prevent me from sitting sit at a keyboard and figure out what is practically possible with the two hands. I thought to myself: If I can write something that I myself, although with a lot of trouble, can play—it might be not too bad for the student who is slightly experienced. Another thing: In a way it is just as difficult to write something simple as to write something complicated. You have to decide every tone rather carefully. Simplicity is a demanding challenge.” (Torben Enghoff)

Since the 1960s the Danish composer and musician Anders Koppel, born in 1947, has being developing his musical creativity in every conceivable way, ranging from jazz, rock, Balkan music to chamber works, ballet music, film music and more than 40 solo concertos for every conceivable instrument. He was born into a musical family as a son of the pianist and composer Herman D. Koppel (1908-1998), one of the leading figures in Danish music in the 20th century. All Herman D. Koppel’s four children became prominent musicians, and in the two following generations great new talents have still been emerging from the artistic Koppel family. Anders Koppel has with considerable energy preserved the luxuriance which was in the air, when in the 1960s he began to unfurl his life as a musician. Since the 1990s he has worked not least on compositions in classical forms, but without giving up his many concerts improvising music of all kinds played on his particularly favorite instrument, a Hammond B3 organ. Koppel’s imagination and fecundity of ideas give his music a character of joie de vivre, curiosity and playfulness. Combined with his profound experience with written-down music it gives a wonderful sparkle to his works in classical forms which are unmistakably founded on the improviser’s sharp ears for fertile ideas and the ability to create gripping music.

Kristian Riisager (b. 1996) received his educated at Hochschule für Musik “Hanns Eisler” in Berlin and The Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen, where he is still studying. In recent years, Kristian has played a number of solo and chamber music concerts around Denmark, just as he has played concerts in Sweden, Germany, Lithuania and Georgia. He has won prizes at several competitions, including Berlingske Classical Music Competition, the national Steinway Festival and Music Without Limits in Lithuania. Kristian Riisager has also made a name for himself as a lied accompanist, and together with soprano Louise McClelland Jacobsen he won 1st prize in the Rued Langgaard Competition. As part of the prize they played in the 2021 opening concert of the Rued Langgaard Festival in Ribe. Kristian has received support from several foundations. Among other things, he has received a Steinway Grand Piano for use during his studies from the Augustinus Foundation. This is Kristian Riisager’s debut album.

In 2018, Aksel Nielsen, cellist and chairman of the Chamber music society BRAGE in Randers, started a dialogue with composer Hanne Tofte Jespersen about a new string quartet. He wished to commission her to write a quartet for BRAGE. They both liked the idea of the new work to be composed for a historical theme which would also be relevant for a present audience, incl. youth. They soon agreed on a context of a late Haydn quartet from the 1790s and Benjamin Britten's 1st string quartet from 1941. BRAGE invited Nordic String Quartet to take up the task and involved four other chamber music societies in the project. Neither Aksel nor Hanne had imagined how relevant it would prove to call the project TIMES OF UNREST. But she completed her quartet in spring 2020 when Covid-19 had caused a pandemia and lockdowns preventing any cultural event.

John Frandsen studied at the Royal Academy of Music. He conducted the Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra from 1945 to 1946 and was principal conductor at the Royal Danish Opera from 1946 to 1980. After that he returned to the Danish Radio as a conductor and musical adviser while retaining his connection with the Royal Theatre as a guest conductor. John Frandsen was one of the outstanding Danish conductors of his time, not least as an interpreter of the Romantic repertoire but also of more recent opera and orchestral music. For three decades the principal conductor of the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, John Frandsen also brought flexible tempi, broad phrasing and rich orchestral sonorities to concert repertoire. This newly remastered compilation brings together 1950s recordings made for Columbia, Odeon and Philips, including Danish classics such as Gade's Echoes of Ossian and an inspired account of Brahms's Fourth Symphony.

On this release, Danacord presents the first recording of the complete Danish Late Romantic Piano Music by Emil Hartmann. Danish pianist Cathrine Penderup herself made a detective work locating all the solo piano works plus several unpublished manuscripts by the Danish late romantic composer Emil Hartmann. The music is very well constructed for the piano and is full of beautiful tunes and harmonies. Volume 1 included all the original works for solo piano and in this final volume 2 is the first recording of the Scandinavian Folk Music, Op. 30, a collection of danses and melodies arranged for solo piano. A release not to be missed.

This new release, the 14th volume in the esteemed Thomas Jensen series, includes previously unpublished broadcasts of 20th-century music, not only by figures closely associated with Thomas Jensen such as Carl Nielsen and Niels Viggo Bentzon, but also Ole Schmidt and Gunnar Berg, who wrote outside the Danish mainstream. Jensen's catholic taste and sympathy with diverse strands in European modernism is attested by his careful shaping of masterpiece by Henze, Honegger and Prokofiev.

As he turns 85 years old, Danish tenor Tonny Landy is still among the finest singers of his generation. This release features immaculate performances of Danish songs which Tonny Landy recorded for the Danish branch of RCA between 1966 and 1969. This is the first modern release of these truly unique and much sought-after recordings. Tonny Landy selected 25 beautiful Danish songs and with his brilliant tenor voice he is on the level of the great Aksel Schiøtz. All the songs in this new release features a short English synopsis.

The First and Fourth symphonies of Jean Sibelius, in previously unpublished live recordings from the early 1960s, are major additions to the recorded legacy of Thomas Jensen. As a young cellist, Jensen had known and played under both Nielsen and Sibelius, and his interpretations of their symphonies are stamped with authority: respectful of the score while seeing deep inside its mysteries. This is the thirteenth volume in Danacord’s renowned Thomas Jensen Legacy series and also includes recordings of Nielsen's Fifth and Sixth symphonies by Jensen with the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra.

Danish pianist Tanja Zapolski found the music she always held close to her heart. It is music to treasure, a timeless experience. All are part of a world of dreams, a kind and tender world and with music to touch our souls. The brand new recording features the Aarhus Symphony Orchestra as partner in slow movements from famous piano concerti- Chopin, Ravel and Grieg. The music spans from Bach to Pärt with the famous Spiegel in Spiegel where the brilliant cellist Toke Møldrup is heard. This is an album for the moments of beauty and calm, where everything around simply is timeless.

A feast of previously unpublished broadcast recordings, focused on music for the stage and including much repertoire otherwise unrecorded. The main work is a three-act comedy by Frederick Rung, telling the story of The Three-Cornered Hat with a light touch and delightful duets and arias. Rare overtures, suites and scenes fill out a rich portrait of the Danish operatic scene in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, completed by a pair of powerful mid-century orchestral pieces.