Nielsen by E. T.

No, this post has nothing to do with extra-terrestrials! Several weeks ago, I had two different conductors with the same initials featured in one composer at this post. Just so, now I present two different conductors with the initials "E.T." performing Nielsen - more fruits of my recent splurgings on Danish 78s. The details:

Nielsen: En Sagadrøm (A Saga Dream), Op. 39
Copenhagen Royal Opera Orchestra conducted by Egisto Tango
Recorded February 27, 1942
HMV DB 5263, one 78-rpm record
Link (FLAC file, 22.27 MB)
Link (MP3 file, 14.67 MB)

Nielsen: Little Suite for Strings, Op. 1
Danish State Broadcasting Orchestra conducted by Erik Tuxen
Recorded April 7, 1948
Columbia DDX 17 and 18, two 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC file, 38.74 MB)
Link (MP3 file, 23.71 MB)

The Sagadrøm record is a real gem, and as for the Little Suite, has there ever been an Opus 1 as accomplished, and as fully characteristic of its composer?

I didn't mean to be gone quite so long, but on top of computer problems, which I'm still working on, I've had to deal with Hurricane Irma, which we in Atlanta didn't get the full brunt of, as Florida did, but we got quite enough - sustained winds of 40 miles per hour, sometimes gusting to 60, and over 3 inches of rain in a single day. The past weekend saw me frantically elevating hundreds of records from the floor of my basement, in anticipation of water from the storm coming in, which, thankfully, didn't happen, but it's always better to be safe than sorry!

Nielsen: Aladdin Suite (Felumb)

This week I present what appears to be the first recording of an orchestral work of Carl Nielsen to occupy more than one record (perhaps, even, more than one side) - five movements from his 1919 incidental music to Adam Oehlenschläger's "dramatic fairy tale" Aladdin. It isn't a work of blazing importance in his oeuvre, perhaps, but it is a lot of fun, and has all the quirkiness I find to be characteristic of Nielsen's music. Outstanding is the section entitled "Torvet i Ispahan" (The Market Place at Ispahan), in which four different sections of the orchestra play simultaneously at different speeds! It's conducted here by Svend Christian Felumb (1898-1872) who, one week before this recording was made, played oboe and English horn on the seminal recording of Nielsen's Wind Quintet.

Nielsen: Suite from the Incidental Music for "Aladdin" (Op. 34)
Tivoli Concert Orchestra conducted by Svend Christian Felumb
Recorded January 31, 1936
and
Nielsen: Maskarade - Prelude to Act II
Royal Danish Opera Orchestra conducted by Johan Hye-Knudsen
Recorded c. February 1936
HMV X 4676, Z 231 and Z 232, one 10-inch and two 12-inch 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 55.76 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 34.72 MB)

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).

Nielsen: Violin Concerto (Telmányi)

Carl Nielsen, 1910

Most people, if they remember the name of the Hungarian-born violinist Emil Telmányi (1892-1988) at all, remember it as belonging to the inventor of the spurious Bach bow (or Vega bow), designed to be able to play on, and sustain, all four strings of the violin simultaneously, for use in the unaccompanied Bach violin works.  But Telmányi was also the first internationally famous exponent of the music of Carl Nielsen (whose daughter, Anne Marie, he married in 1918), and made this first recording of Nielsen's Violin Concerto, for me one of the most delightful of all twentieth-century violin concertos, in 1947:

Nielsen: Concerto for violin and orchestra, Op. 33 and
Mozart: Serenade No. 7 in D, K. 250 ("Haffner") - Menuetto
Emil Telmányi with the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Copenhagen,
conducted by Egisto Tango
Recorded June 3-7, 1947
Tono X-25081 through X-25085, five 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 99.4 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 42.37 MB)