Herman D. Koppel

Herman D. Koppel

Nineteen years ago this month, the world of Danish music lost one of its last living links with Carl Nielsen in the passing of pianist and composer Herman David Koppel (1908-1998). (His brother was the violinist Julius Koppel.) Of Jewish heritage, Koppel, who had to flee Denmark in 1943 when the Nazis placed the country under direct military occupation, had considered Nielsen a mentor and had played the composer's piano works in his presence. Koppel made multiple recordings of Nielsen's piano music, of which these appear to be among the first:

Nielsen: Theme and Variations, Op. 40 and Chaconne, Op. 32
Herman D. Koppel, piano
Recorded December 13, 1940
HMV DB 5252 through DB 5254, three 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 65.99 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 40.48 MB)

Koppel died on Bastille Day, and here he is playing French music - only the second recording ever made of Poulenc's delightful Trio (after the composer's own, for Columbia, in 1928):

Poulenc: Trio for Oboe, Bassoon and Piano (1926)
Waldemar Wolsing, oboe; Carl Bloch, bassoon; Herman D. Koppel, piano
Recorded c. 1950
Metronome CL 3000 and CL 3001, two 10-inch 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC file, 32.22 MB)
Link (MP3 file, 18.71 MB)

Metrnonome Records was an independent Swedish label founded in 1949 by two jazz enthusiasts, brothers Anders and Lars Burman. This was one of their few classical issues.

Corelli: Concerto Grosso, Op. 6, No. 7 (Wöldike)

During the 78-rpm era, record buyers might well be forgiven for thinking that Arcangelo Corelli wrote only one concerto - the ever-popular "Christmas Concerto" - because, for all the attention paid to the other works in his Opus 6, he might as well have. There were, in fact, more recordings made of this eighth of the concerti through 1950 than of the others combined, and not until 1953 did an integral set of the twelve appear (in a Vox LP set) to mark the composer's tercentenary. Meanwhile, a few of the others did manage to make their way to records, including this first recording of No. 7 from Denmark:

Corelli: Concerto Grosso in D Major, Op. 6, No. 7
Chamber Orchestra of the Castle Church, Copenhagen
conducted by Mogens Wöldike
HMV DA 5256 and DA 5257, two 10-inch 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC file, 31.15 MB)
Link (MP3 file, 19.15 MB)

The concertino soloists are Else Marie Bruun and Julius Koppel, violins, and Torben Anton Svendsen, cello; the harpsichordist is unnamed, but I presume it to be Wöldike himself.

Regular followers of this blog will no doubt have noticed the preponderance lately of recordings from Denmark; this is due partly to relatively reasonable postage rates from that country to the USA of late, with the result that I have been buying a fair number of 78s from there in recent months. Stay tuned for more recordings by Danish artists and composers...

Mogens Wöldike - Two Brandenburg Concertos

Christian Ludwig, Margrave of Brandenburg

As the 200th anniversary of the death of Johann Sebastian Bach approached in the year 1950, several record companies worldwide engaged in a flurry of activity making new recordings of his works, including several versions of the six Brandenburg Concertos.  Columbia had a version with Fritz Reiner conducting an ad hoc ensemble of New York players, and Decca had the newly-signed Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra under its founder, Karl Münchinger.  HMV countered with piecemeal issues of the six concertos with Mogens Wöldike leading two different Danish ensembles (Nos. 3 and 6 being done by an ensemble of soloists), recorded over a span of one-and-a-half years.  Nos. 4 and 6 of this set can be heard at the CHARM website; to complement these, I present Wöldike's readings of Nos. 3 and 5:

Bach: Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G Major, BWV 1048
Chamber Ensemble of the Chapel Palace, Copenhagen,
conducted by Mogens Wöldike
Recorded December 1, 1949
and
Bach: Partita No. 1 in B-Flat, BWV 825 - Sarabande
Liselotte Selbiger, harpsichord
Recorded February 3, 1950
HMV C 3947 and C 3948, two 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 40.01 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 25.03 MB)

Bach: Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 in D Major, BWV 1050
Herman D. Koppel, harpsichord; Leo Hansen, violin; Poul Birkelund, flute;
Danish State Broadcasting Chamber Orchestra
conducted by Mogens Wöldike
Recorded May 31, 1950
HMV DB 20118 through DB 20120, three 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 60.63 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 37.54 MB)

Herman D. Koppel, the harpsichordist in No. 5, can be heard in an utterly different triple concerto here - as pianist in Niels Viggo Bentzon's Chamber Concerto recorded the following year.

For those interested, here are the particulars of the order of recording for Wöldike's set of Brandenburgs, culled from Michael Gray's listings, WERM, and Frank Andrews' HMV "C" Series Discography:

No. 4 - mats. 2CS2718-22: Nov 29 '49 & Mar 1 '50* (DB 20109-11 & C 4073-5)
No. 3 - mats. 2CS2723-25: Dec 1 '49 (DB 5291-2 & C 3947-8)
No. 6 - mats. 2CS2813-17: May 27 '50 (DB 20121-3 & C 4164-6)
No. 5 - mats. 2CS2819-24: May 31 '50 (DB 20118-20)
No. 2 - mats. 2CS2908-11: Dec 20 '50 (DB 20107-8 & C 7848-9)
No. 1 - mats. 2CS2952-56: Mar 10 & 11 '51 (DB 20140-2)

*Most, if not all, issued takes of No. 4 are surely from the later date, on the evidence of the high take numbers (4's and 6's).

Buxtehude: Sonata in C Major (Mogens Wöldike)

Dietrich Buxtehude in his only authenticated portrait

My exploration into Danish music continues with a magnificent piece of chamber music by Dietrich Buxtehude (c. 1637-1707). Actually, Buxtehude spent most of his career in what is now Germany - in the town of Lübeck, where, towards the end of his life, the 20-year-old J. S. Bach walked 250 miles from Arnstadt in order to be able to learn from him. So his music is squarely in the German Baroque tradition, but the Danes have always claimed him as their own, and rightfully so, for all of his training was in Denmark. And in the dark early days of the Nazi occupation of Denmark, four Danish musicians committed to disc this sonata by their compatriot, one of 22 that survive:

Buxtehude: Sonata in C Major, BuxWV 266
Else Marie Bruun and Julius Koppel, violins;
Alberto Medici, cello; Mogens Wöldike, harpsichord
Recorded November 19, 1940
HMV DB 5249, one 78-rpm record
Link (FLAC file, 26.47 MB)
Link (MP3 file, 14.81 MB)

Wöldike is by far the best-known of these musicians, and I'm sure his was the guiding spirit behind this performance, with his well-known qualities as a Baroque scholar. Koppel and Bruun were husband and wife, and Medici, despite his Italian-sounding name, appears to have spent his entire career in Denmark; he was principal cellist for the Danish Radio Orchestra for several decades. (Satyr has another recording featuring Elsa Marie Bruun, with Wöldike conducting - the Bach Concerto for violin and oboe.)

Niels Viggo Bentzon: Chamber Concerto

Niels Viggo Bentzon, 1986

Sometimes called "the wild man of Danish music," Niels Viggo Bentzon (1919-2000) was certainly wildly prolific - 664 opus numbers!  Of these, I've heard about one percent, and have found this Chamber Concerto of 1948 to be particularly vital.  Essentially a triple piano concerto with chamber accompaniment (the scoring, besides the pianos, is for clarinet, bassoon, two trumpets, double bass, timpani, snare drum and triangle), it features two fast movements filled with Hindemithian neo-Baroque bustle flanking a long slow movement which may owe more to Bartók with its arabesques and arpeggios; however, with its steady, procession-like tread I'm reminded more of Falla's harpsichord concerto.  Maybe the overall structure of the concerto and its chamber scoring reinforces this impression.  In any case, the piece is great fun, and it's played here by the composer with two pianistic colleagues, and the group to whom it was dedicated:

Bentzon: Chamber Concerto for 11 Instruments, Op. 52
Niels Viggo Bentzon, Georg Vásárhelyi and Herman D. Koppel, pianos
Copenhagen Collegium Musicum conducted by Lavard Friisholm
Recorded February 16, 1951
HMV Z 7036 and 7037, two 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 41.27 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 27.32 MB)

A word about Bentzon's two fellow pianists on this recording: Georg Vásárhelyi (1912-2002) was a Hungarian who studied with Bartók and Edwin Fischer before settling in Denmark, where he taught generations of piano students, including Bentzon.  Herman D. Koppel (1908-1998) was a Copenhagen-born pianist and composer, who, as a young man, had performed Carl Nielsen's piano music in the presence of the composer.