Nielsen Chamber Works for Violin and Strings
Works from a nascent Nielsen are beautifully played here
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Carl Nielsen
Genre:
Chamber
Label: BIS
Magazine Review Date: 4/2007
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 69
Mastering:
Stereo
DDD
Catalogue Number: BIS-CD1444

Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
Sonata for Violin and Piano |
Carl Nielsen, Composer
Carl Nielsen, Composer Georgios Demertzis, Violin Maria Asteriadou, Piano |
Duet |
Carl Nielsen, Composer
Carl Nielsen, Composer Georgios Demertzis, Violin |
Romance |
Carl Nielsen, Composer
Carl Nielsen, Composer Georgios Demertzis, Violin Maria Asteriadou, Piano |
String Quartet |
Carl Nielsen, Composer
Carl Nielsen, Composer New Hellenic Quartet |
Andante Sostenuto |
Carl Nielsen, Composer
Carl Nielsen, Composer New Hellenic Quartet |
Scherzo |
Carl Nielsen, Composer
Carl Nielsen, Composer New Hellenic Quartet |
Author: David Fanning
Here is a disc to delight anyone who has enjoyed Nielsen’s incomparable autobiography, My Childhood on Fyn, and who has wondered what kind of music he was composing at the time. Everything here, apart from the arrangement of the Op 2 oboe Romance, comes from the seven-year period leading up to his well known Op 1 Suite for Strings in which Nielsen’s personal voice first emerged – charmingly but firmly – beside the influences of Brahms, Grieg and Svendsen. On the path towards that breakthrough piece we can follow him through the elementary Mozartean style of the G major Violin Sonata (which lacks a finale) and the A major Duet, through the more Beethovenian D minor Quartet (the work that Nielsen showed Gade when he petitioned for entry to the Copenhagen Conservatoire), via the Romance for violin in a more contemporary – which is to say soft-centred romantic – idiom, up to the more ambitious quartet movements that featured in his first public appearances as composer.
It would be wishful thinking to find anything very prophetic of the mature Nielsen in any of these works. But their documentary interest is obvious, and they are all beautifully played and recorded here (the disc is a companion to Demertzis and Asteriadou’s fine accounts for BIS of the mature violin works, 12/03). The catalogue still lists rival versions on the Kontrapunkt label, which are also finely played, if you can find them.
It would be wishful thinking to find anything very prophetic of the mature Nielsen in any of these works. But their documentary interest is obvious, and they are all beautifully played and recorded here (the disc is a companion to Demertzis and Asteriadou’s fine accounts for BIS of the mature violin works, 12/03). The catalogue still lists rival versions on the Kontrapunkt label, which are also finely played, if you can find them.
Discover the world's largest classical music catalogue with Presto Music.

Gramophone Digital Club
- Digital Edition
- Digital Archive
- Reviews Database
- Full website access
From £8.75 / month
Subscribe
Gramophone Full Club
- Print Edition
- Digital Edition
- Digital Archive
- Reviews Database
- Full website access
From £11.00 / month
Subscribe
If you are a library, university or other organisation that would be interested in an institutional subscription to Gramophone please click here for further information.