This second disc in Danacord's enterprising series devoted to Danish composer fathers and sons (the first featured J P E and Emil Hartmann, and forthcoming ones include the Langgaards, the Hameriks and the Helsteds) juxtaposes four pieces by Niels Gade (1817-90) and the delightful Second Violin Concerto by his son Axel (1860-1921). Niels, incidentally, was J P E Hartmann's son-in-law; a case for another series perhaps?
Echoes from Ossian (1840) is deservedly one of Gade pere's best-known works, engaging, well-constructed and atmospheric. The brief Mariotta Overture (1850) derives from a Singspiel that flopped, but is itself a jolly enough affair. Hamlet (1861), by contrast, is weightier and more dramatic, though its subject - of obvious interest to a Dane - did not call forth a nationalist idiom. It makes an interesting alternative to Tchaikovsky's fantasy overture. The A minor Capriccio (1878, here in Reinecke's orchestration) is a fairly routine display piece.
The real novelty here is Axel Gade's Concerto of 1899 (No 1 dates from 1889). The concerto is romantic but light, a touch prolix in the outer movements but well laid out for the instrument (as one would expect of a former pupil of Joachim). The central Serenade pastorale is lovely. Christina Astrand plays it nicely, though in the finale, as in the Capriccio, her intonation is a touch wayward in the higher, faster passages. The Orchestra plays admirably throughout and if its accounts are not first choices, the programme is self-recommending.'