Essential Nielsen
Carl Nielsen stands with his exact contemporary Jean Sibelius as the most important Nordic composer of the post-Romantic period. By trusting his rural instincts, Nielsen developed a thrilling, fissile musical language all of his own.
Read more…Nielsen was born into poverty in a Denmark dominated by European Romantic music. He promised to counter the 'German gravy and grease' with works that tapped into life's fundamental sources of energy and joy, namely song and dance. Nielsen never forgot his childhood as a fiddle player in a wedding band and a bugle player in a military barracks. He combined those experiences with European developments in musical thinking and a typically Danish directness. The musical results are forceful yet embracing, confrontational yet joyous. Nielsen wrote six symphonies in which the idea of energy is let loose (1-3) and then subjected to negative forces (4-5, written during and after the First World War). His wicked sense of humour characterizes his final symphony, the opera 'Maskarade' and his three concertos. Nielsen also wrote hundreds of songs that he hoped would stick in the minds of ordinary Danes, which they did.