The Launy Grøndahl Legacy, Vol. 4

Carl Nielsen 1-29. Maskarade, FS 39 – Opera in Three Acts CD 2 1-10. Maskarade, FS 39 – Opera in Three Acts Knud Jeppesen Ørnen og skarnbassen The Eagle and the Beetle. From Aesop’s Fables 11. The terrified hare ran across the field 12. Now the eagle was not the hunter 13. Content once more, the eagle wheeled The Launy Grøndahl Legacy, Vol. 4 © By Martin Granau Three factors help to explain the upturn in the fortunes of Danish music on record in the early 1950s. New tape technology facilitated better and easier recording. The musicians of the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra, after years of union wrangling, gave up their claim to copyright in the tapes of their broadcasts. Last but not least, their conductor, Launy Grøndahl, turned with a more determined focus to making studio records of the music from his homeland. For years he had led the DRSO on the tours that made the orchestra’s name overseas, such as the 1951 concerts in the UK that catalysed British interest in Carl Nielsen’s music with a legendary account of the Fourth Symphony at the Royal Festival Hall in London. Now in his late 60s, feeling that his days of touring were over, Grøndahl ceded his place in charge of the DRSO to Erik Tuxen and Thomas Jensen when the orchestra embarked on a seven-week tour of the US in 1952. Back at home, he opened the last chapter of his career, devoted to preserving the Danish musical heritage which he had promoted for so long. Two representative examples are presented here, one familiar, the other much less so. The major work is Nielsen’s comic opera Maskarade. He composed it in 1905-06 as a satirical sequel to his epic debut on the lyric stage with Saul and David (1901). By contrast to his first opera’s Biblical themes of tragedy and heroism, Nielsen had in mind a work for the lyric stage in the spirit of the biting social comedies written by Ludvig Holberg (1684-1754), the jurist and father of modern Danish and Norwegian literature who worked at a time when both countries were governed under the same monarchy (hence the fact that, while Holberg’s comedies held the stages of Copenhagen theatres for decades, he was held in equally high esteem by Grieg and his contemporaries in Norway’s romantic nationalism movement). The libretto for Maskarade, following Holberg’s 1724 play of the same name, was devised at Nielsen’s invitation by a renowned Holberg scholar, Vilhelm Andersen. RELEASE DATE: December 2020 CATALOGUE NUMBER: DACOCD 884 EAN: 5709499884003 Download BOOKLET (PDF) Related