Erling Bløndal Bengtsson, the cellist on this recording, made his official debut in 1942 as a soloist with the Tivoli Symphony Orchestra and later became a professor at the Royal Danish Academy of Music.
Performer Biography
Tamás Vető, the conductor, emigrated to Denmark in 1957 and made his debut with the Tivoli Symphony Orchestra, later becoming a conductor at the Danish Royal Theatre.
Performer Biography
Anton Kontra, the violinist, won First Prize at the International Bach Competition in Budapest in 1950 and later founded the Kontra Quartet, which was appointed Danish State Quartet.
Composer's Artistic Vision
Maegaard, a principal figure of modernism, explored the Romantic virtuoso concertos in the 1980s, fascinated by their blend of instrumental virtuosity and emotional expression.
Compositional Technique
Schoenberg's "Variations on a Recitative," composed in 1941, is tonal despite his established atonal dodecaphonic technique, with an unmistakably D tonic.
Composition History
Jan Maegaard's orchestration of Arnold Schoenberg's "Variations on a Recitative" for organ was inspired by a critic's wish for an orchestral version by Schoenberg himself.
Composer Biography
Jan Maegaard, born in Copenhagen in 1926, studied piano and double bass at the Royal Danish Academy of Music and later became a professor of music at the University of Copenhagen.
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