Herman D. Koppel’s output evidently varies in quality. Dacapo’s previous selection of symphonies, Nos. 6 and 7 (late works both), received an enthusiastic recommendation from Classicstoday.com reviewer Victor Carr Jr., and with good reason. However, the composer essentially disowned these two early works, and while hardly as accomplished as his mature pieces, they do not lack talent (as Nielsen himself remarked of the First Symphony).
Of course, the influence of Nielsen’s music is all over both of them. If Symphony No. 1 (1930) were a Japanese monster film, it would be called “The Espansiva vs. The Inextinguishable”, though the touches of chromatic harmony also reveal something of the influence of Hindemith’s Weimar period works. The best movement is the central Adagio, desolate and austerely beautiful, with finely calculated wind writing, while the final march makes for a facile if snappy conclusion. Coming after that Adagio it leaves the listener unsatisfied, as it no doubt did the composer; but listening to immature music clearly influenced by its time and place offers serious collectors its own sort of satisfaction.
The Second Symphony says more than the first, and does so with greater control and resourcefulness despite its longer playing time. By eliminating all percussion save timpani Koppel clearly is trying to impose discipline on his writing, abjuring coloristic effects and concentrating instead on developmental logic. The result is an extended finale that, while three times longer than in the First Symphony, successfully gathers the threads of the music together after the curiously mellow opening and appealingly fluent Andante. Again, there would be better things to come, but the work still makes a good overall impression.
As with their previous issue, Moshe Atzmon and the Aalborg Symphony Orchestra make a remarkably strong case for music that even Danish musicians could not possibly know well, and Dacapo’s sonics capture their efforts cleanly and clearly. Obviously this is something of a specialist issue, but no less rewarding for that, and stands as an interesting case study of the influence of Nielsen on the younger generation of Danish composers.
