Denmark’s “other” Nielsen was a very good composer of attractive music in a late-Romantic style. The overture to Isbella, a one-acter presumably about some babe who comes to a bad end, is an attractive piece of reflective musical poetry featuring engaging writing for harp and woodwinds. It’s a touch anonymous in style perhaps, but it’s undeniably pretty. Lackschmi, though, is another matter entirely. It dates from the early 1920s and manages to sound evocatively Oriental but totally different from Nielsen’s (the other one’s) Aladdin music. There’s nothing not to like here: colorful dances, exotic scoring, and a plot that involves the usual love triangle, a snake-charmer, lots of rhythmically vigorous macho posturing between the principal male dancers, and a concluding immolation scene. It’s well played by the Queensland orchestra, and sympathetically conducted, though I could imagine even sharper rhythms and a richer ensemble tone at climaxes. The sound, save for a strangely forward harp in the tutti’s, is good. The piece is a real find.
