From the Archives of Unjustly Neglected Danish Composers comes this surprisingly pleasurable disc of symphonies by Peter Erasmus Lange-Müller (1850-1926), a composer who spent the better part of his life writing ballads and songs and fending off headaches. These symphonies, which receive enthusiastic playing in this world-premiere recording, are true rarities–the second symphony apparently has not been heard since 1916–and likely would qualify for trivial status in the current glut of musical offerings, except that these works are worth hearing.
Well-crafted with some memorable tunes, these pieces will strike the listener as a structural and harmonic cross between Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Gade, with a little Czech spice thrown in. While Lange-Müller got short shrift for his orchestral writing (overly opaque and thick, the same charge often leveled at Schumann), the Chamber Philharmonic of Bohemia and conductor Douglas Bostock make every effort to lighten the textures, employing a string section roughly the size of a traditional late-19th-century group.
The first symphony (1879) is ostensibly a program symphony with all sorts of titles describing the vagaries of the fall season–but the text is incidental. The first movement possesses harmonic tensions reminiscent of Schumann (especially in the rising tremolo string passages) and the second represents the “whirling dance with the falling leaves”, an infectious little scherzo despite its A minor tonality. A wistful but unremarkable slow movement is followed by a final movement that manifests adumbrations of Nielsen’s First Symphony.
The tauter second symphony of 1889 has much the same feel of the first, but with more brass writing, a feature the liner notes unduly emphasize as being forward-looking. In fact, the prominent trumpet and trombone parts are entirely conventional, even archaic, in view of the innovations of Berlioz and Wagner that preceded both these works and even Lange-Müller’s birth. So, anyone listening to these works for the first time (and hopefully not the last) should be prepared for nothing too shocking or original except for this overlooked composer’s nicely wrought symphonic attempts.
