Langgaard

With his symphonies the Danish composer Rued Langgaard offered 16 vastly different versions of what a symphony can be. His captivating, complex genius made room for all conceivable idioms and a wealth of styles ranging from the grandiosely Late Romantic to the purest Absurdism. This box is the first collected recording of Langgaard's 16 symphonies based on the critical edition of the scores; recordings which demonstrate, with spectacular sound quality, Langgaards masterly grasp of the orchestra and his ecstatic view of art.

Rued Langgaard (18931952) was the major Danish late-Romantic composer who did not gain recognition in his mother country. His greatest successes took place in Germany and Austria, where his Symphonies Nos. 2 and 6 were met with considerable acclaim. Back home, he never received that kind of backing. He died a careworn and despairing individual. On this recording with one of the world's leading orchestras, the tradition-conscious Vienna Philharmonic, one is therefore able to hear Langgaard's music 'return home' to a central European musical culture. At the same time things were going swimmingly for his colleague Jacob Gade (18791963) whose Tango Jalousie has become the absolutely most frequently played piece of Danish music for almost a century.

The life and works of the Danish composer Rued Langgaard (1893-1952) present one of the odder stories in the annals of classical music. He was a child prodigy of enormous talent who grew into a man of breathtaking fecundity. His music was largely ignored by his contemporaries and was left in a state of near-chaos by the composer himself, as he kept returning to his music, revising and recycling it. The music itself varies from the self-indulgently banal at the bottom end of the scale to the blazingly original and powerful at the top.

A wonderfully gifted child, the Danish composer Rued Langgaard (1893-1952) occupies a completely unique place in the history of music, in which he is only just beginning to feature. A virtuoso organist at the age of eleven, he composed a First Symphony at the age of seventeen. An hour long, it was performed for the first time by no less than the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra in 1913. But Langgaard was too visionary, too original, too far from fashion and the common world to be successful.

Hyperion’s Romantic Violin Concerto series returns with three real rarities, rescuing them from their current neglect. All receive the strongest advocacy from Linus Roth, who plays them like the repertoire standards they may one day become.

There is, of course, no shortage of Romantic-era violin concertos in the instrument's standard repertoire. None of them found with any regularity on the concert stage, however, hail from Denmark. This DaCapo album demonstrates that there are indeed examples that come to us from the Scandinavian country, and even that some of them are inexplicably excluded from the modern canon.

With his symphonies the Danish composer Rued Langgaard offered 16 vastly different versions of what a symphony can be. His captivating, complex genius made room for all conceivable idioms and a wealth of styles ranging from the grandiosely Late Romantic to the purest Absurdism. This box is the first collected recording of Langgaard's 16 symphonies based on the critical edition of the scores; recordings which demonstrate, with spectacular sound quality, Langgaards masterly grasp of the orchestra and his ecstatic view of art: "Mr. Dausgaard's keen advocacy elicits polished, persuasive accounts that live up to Langgaard's motto: 'Long Live Beauty'", wrote The New York Times.

The string quartets of Danish music's eccentric outsider Rued Langgaard (1893-1952) are passionate works of the composer's youth, representing both his nostalgically romantic side and his profoundly visionary modernity. For the first time on CD, this recording series presents all 9 quartets in the award-winning young Nightingale String Quartet's distinctly dramatic interpretation based on the revised Rued Langgaard Edition.