Langgaard: Complete Works for Violin & Piano, Vol. 2

Featuring

Gunvor Sihm
Berit Johansen Tange
Thomas Søndergård
Per Salo
DR SymfoniOrkestret
Rued Langgaard

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Composition History

Langgaard's compositions for violin and piano are significant because they represent all four main phases of his musical development.

Composer Biography

Rued Langgaard, a Danish composer, debuted as an organist and organ improviser at age 11, and his first symphony was performed by the Berlin Philharmonic when he was nineteen.

Composer's Artistic Vision

Langgaard's music is known for its great stylistic variation, complex and unconventional forms, and a striving for expressive, image-creating, and visionary modes of expression, with elements anticipating avant-garde, minimalism, and postmodernism.

Recording & Production

This album includes the world premiere recordings of an early, incomplete sonata and the peculiar Sunday Sonata by Rued Langgaard.

Instruments

Gunvor Sihm, the violinist on this recording, plays a Guarnerius violin made in 1725, on loan from the Augustinus Foundation.

Cultural Impact

After Langgaard's death in 1952, his music was largely forgotten until a 1968 performance of his work Music of the Spheres sparked a renaissance, leading him to be recognized as one of the 20th century's most important Danish composers.

Historical Context

In Denmark, Langgaard's religiously and symbolically tinged music was viewed with skepticism and did not fit the anti-Romantic, down-to-earth aesthetic prevalent after 1930, which was largely influenced by Carl Nielsen.