Nielsen: The Organ Works

Featuring

Bine Katrine Bryndorf
Torsten Nielsen
Carl August Nielsen

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Composer's Artistic Vision

Nielsen aimed to suppress personal taste in his organ music, aspiring to "crystal-clear values that lie latent in the will of the music itself, elevated above all kinds of feelings."

Instruments

The organ at Nikolaj Kunsthal, inaugurated on the same day Nielsen finished Commotio, was Denmark's first "organ movement organ," designed to return to a more authentic, pre-Romantic style.

Recording & Production

The specific registrations used for this recording of Commotio follow notes found in a 1932 first edition, which belonged to an organist close to Nielsen.

Composer Biography

Carl Nielsen, a Danish composer, violinist, and conductor, grew up in poverty on Funen but later achieved great national and international success.

Compositional Technique

Nielsen's Commotio for organ is rigorously structured, borne up by two long fugues and a third short fugue, with Baroque-inspired elements.

Composition History

Nielsen's major organ work, Commotio, was not a commissioned piece but grew out of an "inner urge" and a long-held desire to compose for the instrument.

Performer Biography

Bine Bryndorf, the organist on this recording, is a professor of organ and sacred music at the Royal Danish Academy of Music and has recorded the complete organ works of Dietrich Buxtehude.