Rued Langgaard - Music of the Spheres (Gennady Rozhdestvensky)

Information

Composer: Rued Langgaard

• (01-19) Music of the Spheres
• (20) Four Tone Pictures: I. Likewords for a summer's day saga
• (21) Four Tone Pictures: II. A scent of mull and mud
• (22) Four Tone Pictures: III. A golden flake hovers above
• (23) Four Tone Pictures: IV. The flowering summer was linked to the harvest

Gitta-Maria Sjöberg, soprano
Danish National Symphony Orchestra & Choir
Gennady Rozhdestvensky, conductor

Date: 1997
Label: Chandos
https://www.chandos.net/products/catalogue/CHAN%209517

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Review

Fitful though they have been, Chandos’s issues devoted to the works of Rued Langgaard (1893-1952) have been especially welcome for their excellence of production. Thus far Chandos have featured four of his 16 symphonies and a tone-poem, conducted by Jarvi and Segerstam (12/92). Now, with Rozhdestvensky at the helm, they have turned to what is probably this composer’s most important – certainly most original – work, Music of the Spheres (1916-18). So radical did its sonic experiments seem even in the late-1960s that Ligeti no less, when inspecting the score, quipped that he had merely been a “Langgaard imitator” all along. The manipulation of blocks of sound rather than conventional thematic development does have much in common with trends in post-Second World War avant-garde composition (though stemming from impressionism), but other contemporaries of Langgaard’s, such as Schoenberg and Scriabin, had traversed similar terrain at least in part. The main difference between Langgaard and Ligeti lies in the former’s reliance on a fundamentally tonal language, however eccentrically deployed, and Music of the Spheres seems in hindsight to be a bridge between two other highly virtuosic scores with celestial connotations: Holst’s The Planets and Ligeti’s Atmospheres. The Tone Pictures (1917) were written alongside this extraordinary work, yet possess none of its stature: four charming songs, they seem effusive and outmoded by comparison.

Fine as John Frandsen’s pioneering account of Music of the Spheres still is, this newcomer is a markedly better all-round version. As interpretations both have much to offer, the principal differences being ones of internal balance. But the playing of the Danish orchestra for Chandos has gained much in fluency and security over that in 1980 (though admittedly the latter was for a public performance), and Chandos’s sound is of demonstration quality. This really is a disc you should hear.

-- Gramophone

More reviews:
BBC Music Magazine  PERFORMANCE: **** / SOUND: *****
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2000/apr00/langgaard.htm
http://www.amazon.com/Langgaard-Music-Spheres-Four-Pictures/dp/B000000B0N

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Rued Langgaard (28 July 1893 – 10 July 1952) was a late-Romantic Danish composer and organist. Langgaard composed in a late Romantic style which was at odds with that of his Danish contemporaries and was recognized only 16 years after his death. Influenced by Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss, he was a master of orchestration and a prolific composer for the large orchestra, writing 16 symphonies as well as other orchestral works. His total production of over 400 works included more than 150 songs, works for piano, organ, and an opera entitled Antikrist (The Antichrist).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rued_Langgaard

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Gennady Rozhdestvensky (born 4 May 1931 in Moscow) is a Russian conductor. He studied conducting with his father, noted conductor and pedagogue Nikolai Anosov, at the Moscow Conservatory and piano with Lev Oborin. Rozhdestvensky is considered a versatile conductor and a highly cultured musician with a supple stick technique. With the USSR Ministry of Culture Symphony Orchestra he recorded all the symphonies of Dmitri Shostakovich, Alexander Glazunov, Anton Bruckner, Alfred Schnittke, and Arthur Honegger for the label Melodiya. He also premiered many works of other Soviet composers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gennady_Rozhdestvensky

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