These premiere recordings have appeared on a two-LP set (EMI, 7/85), in harness with Erik Tuxen’s 78s of the Fifth Symphony and Louis Cahuzac’s pioneering account of the Clarinet Concerto, but are new to CD. Unlike the Sibelius symphonies, all of which were on record by the mid 1930s, those by Nielsen had to wait until the post-war years before any found their way on to shellac. Tuxen recorded the Sinfonia espansiva in 1946 and Thomas Jensen made this set of The Four Temperaments the following year. He had, incidentally, recorded the work in 1944 (on HMV DB17/20) but for some reason this was never issued.
Jensen’s credentials as a Nielsen interpreter are too well known to need repetition but Launy Grondahl is less familiar. He recorded the Fourth Symphony in 1951 but made few other commercial recordings. He had played under Nielsen and when the Danish State Radio Symphony Orchestra were formed in 1925, he became their conductor, remaining with them for over 30 years. The orchestra were on peak form when they made these records and play as if possessed.
I still don’t know finer performances of either symphony and they have never sounded better than they do here in Michael Dutton’s excellent transfers. The sound is full-bodied and present and will delight readers who know the original LPs. An indispensable part of any collector’s Nielsen library.'