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Nielsen: Music For Wind Instruments - Athena Ensemble (2008)

Posted By: peotuvave

Date: 1 Sep 2014 18:24:41

Nielsen composed most of his wind chamber music towards the latter part of his career, when his interests moved from strings to wind instruments. The disc includes the most familiar and widely recorded specimen of Nielsen’s chamber writing, the 1922 Wind Quintet, coupled with lesser known works such as Serenata in Vano, Two Fantasies Op.2 and Canto Serioso. “Both major and minor works are wonderfully played… One can urge immediate acquisition of this disc,” wrote Fanfare. Although, now longer performing publicly, the Athena Ensemble had an excellent career and reputation, “The music is expertly performed with charm, sensitivity and imagination by the Athena Ensemble” said Classic CD (on the Elgar Wind Quintet recording, CHAN 241-33) and this disc is sure to remind listeners of their back catalogue with Chandos.

Composer: Carl Nielsen
Orchestra/Ensemble: Athena Ensemble

Reviews: I’ve been told by several wind-ensemble-players that their “Beethoven Ninth,” the work they consider to be the greatest of the great, is this Nielsen quintet, and so it is particularly happy that this extremely fine and highly prized March-May 1979 analog recording by the Athena Ensemble, pictured on the inside back cover of the booklet in their full late-Hippie dos and clothes, has been chosen for CD reissue.

There is good reason for the high regard in which this quintet is held. From its opening notes, one is swept away to a world of calm in nature, a surprising contrast to the powerful Fifth Symphony that immediately preceded it. Yet its attractiveness and gentle nature belie its depths of subtlety in modulation and development; the first movement, for instance, begins in E but tends to look southwards tonally, so that it ends in the key of A. Nielsen also showed great ingenuity in finding surprising new ways to combine five instruments that, due to timbral differences, simply do not blend. Though the themes in all three movements sound deceptively simple, they are not, but to the casual listener this does not really become apparent until the last movement, a superb theme and variations in which the oboist changes to English horn. The theme is a chorale written by Nielsen, “My Jesus, make my heart to love Thee.” Not surprisingly for the non-religious Nielsen, the variations are full of whimsy and humor, and not at all devout. Indeed, the light-hearted nature of these variations, particularly the one for squawking clarinet, belies the quite intricate underlying structure of each and every section of this superb work.

Following the quintet is the even more whimsical and brief Serenata in vano , written eight years earlier. The piece depicts, as the liner notes put it, “some kind of futile serenade” in which the players mimic a slightly drunken group of musicians warming up, followed by a wispy sort of tune, very pretty, that apparently has no effect on the players, who begin to slack off, their “drunkenness” showing itself in an absurd little march, prosaic and not entirely in step. The very early Fantasy Pieces (1889) for oboe are more serious but equally slight, though the Humoresque shows us glimpses of the mature Nielsen to come.

By contrast, the Canto serioso for horn and piano of 1913 is fully mature Nielsen, slight in scope but not in content. A very elegant theme is played by the piano, almost as an introduction, around which the horn weaves a countermelody. When the piano plays the second theme, however, the horn answers it in call-and-response style before it is developed rhythmically and harmonically. A quite abrupt change of mood leads to marcato chords played by the piano, with equally marcato playing from the horn, before a return to lyricism. This is an outstanding piece.

The incidental music to Nielsen’s patriotic play Moderen (1920) contains some of his melodies best loved by his countrymen. Though very brief, each piece is a gem, particularly the a capella flute piece, “The Children are Playing,” and the final flute/harp duet, “The Fog is Lifting.” Nielsen generally disliked the harp (he once said, “A harp in the orchestra is like a hair in the soup!”), yet this particular combination inspired him to one of his gentlest and most exquisite creations, beautifully played here by flutist Richard McNicol and harpist David Watkins.

As usual for most Chandos recordings, the acoustic tends to be over reverberant, engineered more like a pop record and not entirely natural sounding, but it is serviceable in bringing us these excellent performances. The best of competing versions of the Quintet are those by the Philadelphia Woodwind Quintet (Boston), the Bergen Wind Quintet (BIS, with even cleaner sound than this version), and the Melos Ensemble on EMI. The best performance of the Serenata in vano I’ve ever heard is given by the Chicago Pro Musica (Reference), and the Canto serioso is also on the same BIS CD, featuring the excellent pianist Leif Ove Andsnes. Very highly recommended for lovers of wind-playing in general and Nielsen in particular.

Tracklisting:

1. Quintet For Wind Instruments - Op.43 FS 100: Allegro ben marcato
2. Quintet For Wind Instruments - Op.43 FS 100: Minuet
3. Quintet For Wind Instruments - Op.43 FS 100: Praeludium-Tema con variazioni
4. Serenata in Vano, FS 68
5. Two Fantasias Op. 2, FS 8: Romance
6. Two Fantasias Op. 2, FS 8: Humoresque
7. Canto Serioso, FS 132
8. Incidental Music From 'The Mother' - Op. 41, FS 94: Faith And Hope Are Playing
9. Incidental Music From 'The Mother' - Op. 41, FS 94: The Children Are Playing
10. Incidental Music From 'The Mother' - Op. 41, FS 94: The Mist Is Lifting

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