Danish composer Niels Wilhelm Gade is the sole composer on this album by the Århus Chamber Orchestra (Århus Kammerorkester), conducted by Ove Vedsten Larsen. Just two pieces are featured on the album: the Novellette No. 1 in F, Op. 53, and the Novellette No. 2 in E, Op. 58, yet each is a charming work, made of four movements, unto itself. Novellette No. 1 commences with lush strings performing richly textured music. While all of the instruments are unarguably strong, the sweeping cellos truly stand out.

Niels Gade was deeply admired in his own time, not least by such luminaries as Robert Schumann. He was for a time assistant conductor to Mendelssohn (and briefly, following Mendelssohn's death in 1847, chief conductor) at the Leipzig Gewandhaus. Small wonder, then, that his music should show the influences of those two giants. The Second Symphony (premiered at the Gewandhaus in 1844) radiates the same spirited freshness one finds in Schumann's Spring Symphony, for instance - though the scherzo has a galloping open-air joy about it which seems closer to Mendelssohn.

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.