Dag Wirén - Symphonies Nos. 4 & 5 (Thomas Dausgaard)

Information

Composer: Dag Wirén

• (01) Symphony No. 4, Op. 27
• (04) Symphony No. 5, Op. 38
• (08) Ballet-Suite, Op. 24a 'Oscarsbalen'

Norrköping Symphony Orchestra

Thomas Dausgaard, conductor

Date: 1997

Label: cpo

https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/cpo/detail/-/art/Dag-Wiren-1905-1986-Symphonien-Nr-4-5/hnum/8191981

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Review

Even at his roughest and toughest, twentieth century Swedish composer Dag Wirén is no bully boy modernist composer. While his writing is polished, his lines are clean and his shapes are focused, Wirén is still tonal, still melodic, and still readily comprehensible. This doesn't make Wirén any less a modernist -- his acerbic asides and mordant humor mark him out as a man of his time -- but clearly Milhaud meant more to him than Mahler, Hindemith meant more to him than Stravinsky, and Schoenberg meant nothing to him at all. In this well-chosen disc of two symphonies and a ballet suite by Wirén, Thomas Dausgaard and the Norrköping Symphony present a fair and persuasive case for the composer. If you tend to favor the lighter side of Prokofiev, try the sardonic Oscarbalen Suite with its perky themes and pungent colors. If you lean toward the more compact Walton, try symphonies No. 4 and No. 5 with their terse themes, concise forms, and driven tempos. If you tend to favor the massive and the monumental symphonies of Hilding Rosenberg or if you lean toward the anguished and agonized symphonies of Allan Pettersson, skip Dag Wirén. In comparison, his music may seem like too little and too light. Still, captured in CPO's clear sound, Dausgaard and the Norrköping Symphony's alert performances will be mandatory listening for fans of twentieth century Swedish orchestra, if only to put the symphonies of Rosenberg and Pettersson in context.

-- James Leonard, AllMusic

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Dag Wirén (15 October 1905 – 19 April 1986) was a Swedish composer. Wirén studied at the Stockholm Conservatory and continued his studies in Paris. Wirén's output, which ranges from serious to popular, is notable for its quality rather than quantity, and a number of his works were refused opus numbers or withdrawn. He once commented that his first desire was to entertain and please, and compose listener-friendly 'modern' music. As well as composing, Wirén regularly played piano on Swedish Radio during the 1930s; he also devoted himself to chamber music in the 1930s and 40s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dag_Wir%C3%A9n

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Thomas Dausgaard (born 4 July 1963 in Copenhagen) is a Danish conductor. Dausgaard has been Principal Conductor of the Swedish Chamber Orchestra since 1997, and chief conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra since 2016. He was also Principal Conductor of the Danish National Symphony Orchestra from 2004 to 2011, and will become music director of the Seattle Symphony in 2019-2020 season. Dausgaard has recorded several recordings of Danish and other Scandinavian music for Chandos and Dacapo labels, including works by Per Nørgård, Rued Langgaard and Franz Berwald.

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

http://thomasdausgaard.com/

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