Nielsen: Wind Quintet, Op.43 (1922)

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Carl Nielsen (as he is known in Denmark, where the surname is as common as Smith) used to be one of those composers who attract a large following of enthusiastic addicts, without quite managing to claim an established place in the standard operatic or instrumental repertory. But members of this club have been known suddenly to capture popular appeal, and as fickle tastes and fashions change (and anniversaries come along….) it would appear that Nielsen’s music has finally made the kind of breakthrough achieved (posthumously, needless to say) by such as Mahler, Janáček, and Bruckner. His pre-eminent position in the musical history of Denmark has, however, still not impressed the world quite so much as has his contemporary Sibelius in Finland, whose fame during his actual lifetime amply justified his state sponsorship in terms of sheer prestige value to his country. Although it is easy to link these two composers by the accident of their both having been born in the same year in two countries generally (though somewhat incorrectly) regarded as part of Scandinavia, this convenient and slightly superficial pairing is in some ways musically justifiable as well. Having grown up at a time when artistic Europe had become a veritable hot-bed of ripe Romanticism and Expressionism, both men reacted strongly against the current quest for “bigness”; as they became mature artists they returned more and more to the musical ideals of the 18th century classicists, deriving further inspiration from the people, legends, and natural beauty of their homelands. 

It might have been expected that with these credentials Nielsen and Sibelius would have composed a copious amount of chamber music, especially since both were highly accomplished violinists and took active part in a great deal of chamber music-making during their younger days – for which occasions they both produced a number of string quartets. But, studenthood over, Sibelius eventually published just the one quartet, and although Nielsen released four of them, they are all relatively early works, so that for the last twenty-five years of his life that most exclusive of classical property seemed to hold no more interest at all for this decidedly classically-orientated composer. Would that we had just one quartet from around the time of the last three tremendous symphonies! The quartets he did produce promised so much that we are entitled to feel disappointed and deprived, even though his supreme intellectual and emotional energy gave us so many masterpieces in other genres.

However, we do have the marvellous Wind Quintet, perhaps the finest work ever written for this tricky medium – composed well after he had abandoned quartets, and immediately following the mighty fifth symphony, almost as a kind of relaxed exorcism. He had recently heard the Copenhagen Wind Quintet rehearsing Mozart, and quickly built up strong personal friendships with the players. In composing this quintet for them, he set out not only to create an antidote to the turbulence and conflict of the preceding symphony (still not quite finished), but also to enshrine each of their personalities in music. These diverse characters can be readily identified in the third movement, where each player takes the lead in a succession of wonderfully resourceful variations. The theme itself is disarmingly innocent, with the unmistakable feeling of a Danish hymn tune. Indeed, that’s exactly what it is, having been lifted from his own “Hymns and Sacred Songs” (1912-16) – this one translates very inadequately as “My Jesus, make my heart to love Thee” – not that there is any religious implication here at all, although the scene evoked might have something to do with a country chapel or an open-air Sunday afternoon service. Indeed, one of the many attractive aspects of this quintet is its distinctly outdoor flavour, liberated as it is from the stuffier aspects of chamber music tradition. For all the sophistication and harmonic complexity of his large scale works Nielsen never lost touch with the rustic simplicity of his roots: the rural landscape and the country folk of the island of Fyn (Funen) – witness his wonderful little book My Childhood on Fyn, written in 1927.

For the most part this genial and witty serenity pervades the quintet’s first two movements as well, although the ghost of the fifth symphony then darkens the scene with an angst-ridden and distinctly modernistic introduction to the variations – aided in its starkness by the temporary replacing of the oboe by a cor anglais. But this proves in the end to have been just a feather-ruffling foil to our lovable hymn tune. That is not to deny the moments of tension and irascibility provoked by one of the original players in particular; this can be heard to fuller measure in the clarinet concerto which followed six years later. In 1926, a concerto for flute had set in motion a plan to explore those five personalities even further, but serious (and ultimately fatal) heart disease prevented the realisation of the other three concertos. By then his musical language had moved still further towards a radicalism which baffled most of the Danish musical public – to the extent that it took decades for his later works to gain acceptance at home. From the simplest hymn tune to the atonality of the Op.59 piano pieces, here is perhaps the most stylistically diverse of all the great composers – with that diversity encapsulated for us in one of his greatest and most important masterpieces.

© Alan George
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