# Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Herbert Blomstedt ‎– Carl Nielsen



## itywltmt (May 29, 2011)

Today's installment of Vinyl's Revenge features a few selections from a three-disc set dating from the mid-1970's, featuring the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra under Herbert Blomstedt.

This set, second of two, completes Blomstedt's first complete cycle of the symphonies of *Carl Nielsen*; another cycle was produced about 15 years later while he was Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony. This set features the last three symphonies and three short orchestral works. Today's share has two of these and Nielsen's _Inextinguishable_ symphony.

I remember well my first encounter with Nielsen's _Fourth_: it was a television broadcast featuring Seiji Ozawa and the Boston Symphony, and the impression it left me was such that I absolutely needed to acquire this work - which I did in a Bernstein vintage CBS recording with the New York Philharmonic.

The symphony's opening is mst surprising to me; while most symphonies takes a few bars to establish the mood before "getting to business", Nielsen's work dives right in, as if the first couple of pages of the score were ripped out! The result is a work that is all-momentum, a fitting tribute to Life and the Human Spirit undeterred by the effects of the ongoing First World War.

Preceding the symphony in this share, I added a pair of short orchestral works. The Rhapsodic Overture "An Imaginary Trip to the Faroe Islands" draws on Faroese folk tunes but also contains freely composed sections. The nine-minute symphonic poem "Pan and Syrinx" is based on the ancient legend which tells how the amorous god Pan invented the pan flute when following the nymph Syrinx.

Happy Listening!








*Carl NIELSEN (1865-1931)*

Rhapsody Overture 'En fantasirejse til Faeroene' (An Imaginary Trip to the Faroe Islands), FS123
Pan And Syrinx, Op. 49
Symphony No. 4, Op. 29 "The Inextinguishable"

Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra
Herbert Blomstedt, conducting

Seraphim ‎- SIC-6098
Vinyl, LP, Stereo, Quadraphonic 
Released 1975

Details - https://www.discogs.com/Danish-Radi...onies-Of-Carl-Nielsen-Album-2/release/7208102

YouTube URL - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6swnss9F7SHjVr1FHbYTpOsJG9fKVyhL


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## itywltmt (May 29, 2011)

We are repurposing the music from this post as a new montage in our ongoing A la Carte series on the _For Your Listening Pleasure_ podcast May 27, 2022. The following notes are an update .

With this A la Carte poat, we conclude our week-long look on the #FYLP podcast at the symphonies of Carl Nielsen with two of my favourites – the second and fourth, performed here by Herbert Blomstedt but this time in an earlier Nielsen cycle he recorded for EMI with the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra.

Herbert Blomstedt’s first Nielsen Symphony cycle has made the rounds of reissues; all of these performances were surpassed, by and large, by his San Francisco remakes which feature better playing, better sonics, and generally a bolder and livelier guiding hand from the podium. Still, there are things here to enjoy.

The original post added a pair of short works to the Fourth. Today’s share expands by adding the second symphony, nicknames “the four temperaments”. Nielsen himself describes the background to the symphony in a programme note for a performance at the Konsertföreningen (Concert Society) in Stockholm shortly before he died in 1931.



> I had the idea for ‘The Four Temperaments’ many years ago at a country inn in Zealand. On the wall of the room where I was drinking a glass of beer with my wife and some friends hung an extremely comical coloured picture, divided into four sections in which ‘the Temperaments’ were represented and furnished with titles: ‘The Choleric’, ‘The Sanguine’, ‘The Melancholic’ and ‘The Phlegmatic’. The Choleric was on horseback. He had a long sword in his hand, which he was wielding fiercely in thin air; his eyes were bulging out of his head, his hair streamed wildly around his face, which was so distorted by rage and diabolical hate that I could not help bursting out laughing. The other three pictures were in the same style, and my friends and I were heartily amused by the naivety of the pictures, their exaggerated expression and their comic earnestness. But how strangely things can sometimes turn out! I, who had laughed aloud and mockingly at these pictures, returned constantly to them in my thoughts, and one fine day I realized that these shoddy pictures still contained a kind of core or idea and – just think! – even a musical undercurrent! Some time later, then, I began to work out the first movement of a symphony, but I had to be careful that it did not fence in the empty air, and I hoped of course that my listeners would not laugh so that the irony of fate would smite my soul.


*Carl NIELSEN (1865-1931)*
Rhapsody Overture 'En fantasirejse til Faeroene' (An Imaginary Trip to the Faroe Islands), FS123
[Vinyl’s Revenge #38]

Symphony No.2 "De Fire Temperamenter" (The Four Temperaments), FS29 [Op.16] 
[NEW]

Pan og Syrinx, FS87 [Op.49]
[Vinyl’s Revenge #38]

Symphony No.4 ("Det Uudslukkelige" (The Inextinguishable), FS76 [Op.29]
[Vinyl’s Revenge #38]

DR Symfoniorkestret
Herbert Blomstedt, conducting

Archive page - Carl Nielsen A la Carte : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive


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