The recent revival of interest in the music of Rued Langgaard (1893-1952) here extends to the first performance and recording of a piano concerto by his father Siegfried (1852-1914), together with an exhumation of the curious From Arild Concerto in which the son adapts fragments of his father's work to evoke the lost world of a fin de siecle childhood. Although Liszt heard the solo part of Siegfried's concerto and wrote approvingly from Budapest, it does not seem to have been performed in its full orchestral version. Its big-boned, rather empty-headed virtuoso style needs a pianist like Oleg Marshev, best known for his notably extrovert Prokofiev sonata series, also on Danacord. His firm technique is not quite matched by that of the orchestra, here conducted not by their current chief, Iona Brown, but by the Zurich-born Matthias Aeschbacher. The first exposed entry of the woodwinds at 2'14'' does not inspire confidence. The main problem, however, is the slightly cramped acoustic. This does not make for the easiest of listens.
Much more intriguing, if no more convincing to these ears, is Rued's quirky concerto, a free adaptation of his father's thematic material that takes in allusions to Wagner, palm court frolics, cheap melodrama and Scriabinesque Apocalypse. Langgaard, an archetypal musical outsider not unlike Charles Ives or Havergal Brian, may have produced one near masterpiece in The Music of the Spheres (Chandos, 9/97) but the present disc is strictly for the converted.

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