Neilsen's Mother ...
Carl Nielsen's music to The Mother: A Play in a Prologue and Seven Scenes by Helge Rode was recorded in full for the first time here. Some excerpts have found their way in into record collectors' collections, perhaps, but how this went under the discographical radar for so long is a mystery.
The incidental music (Nielsen's Op. 61/FS 94/CNW 18) was written for a gala celebration of the reunification of Southern Jutland with Denmark in 1920. The score had to wait until 2007 for publication, though, and until 2020 for this recording.
This begins with an orchestral march that is so rousing it could be a National Anthem (interestingly, later on there is a movement containing the anthems of the World War I allies, but fragmented, including God Save the King , the Marseillaise, and The Star Spangled Banner - below):
There is a kind of double-overture here, as the tone poem Saga-Drøm (Saga Dream) has been requisitioned - and it is heard in a simply beautiful performance, the perfect complement to the preceding March. Herel teh sound-world verges on the Sibelian in its sense of space:
Listen to how fine the playing of the Odense orchestra is in the above excerpt: perhaps just a touch of shrillness to the upper end of the violins, but what a fine creamy sound the brass make, and how well articulated the string lines.
If you know any of this score (unlikely!) then it might be "The Mist is Rising" for flute and harp:
You can hear an alternative here, for example.
There are two main vocal soloists: tenor Adam Rils (who plays "the Scald" (a Scandinavian court poet) and Palle Knudsen, the baritone who sings The Fool, Otehr soloists from the orchestra are individually listed in the literature. Other voices are present, too, sometimes used in melodrama (in this sense, spoken voice over orchestra).
Here's Rils in "Wild the Storm and Blackened Waters," his voice absolutely lovely in this somewhat folksy number; he is answered by Knudsen in the second verse, which gives us an idea of both oft heir voices:
Youc an hear the ease with which Rils negotiates teh upepr registers in "My Heart was Truly Bitter" from Scene 4:
Knudsen has the most velvety voice. Here's "Like Golden Amber is my Girl":
Nielsen presents a necklace of sound pearls (most movements are short, probably with an average of two minutes), each entirely memorable. There is even a solo piano "Gramphone Waltz," played here by Ole Bartholin Kiilerich:
It is not all folksy melodies, though. The Prelude to the Fourth Scene is markedly laden, emotionally, and intense. Conductor Andreas Delfs finds just the right tempo:
The penultimate number (No. 20), "Echo Song), is great fun, the Odense hornist absolutely beautiful of timbre, the answering clarinet perfectly wistful in its thematic circularity. And then the voices get involved in the echoing fun (Christine Nonbo Andersen, soprano; Rasmus Gravers Nielsen, tenor; Steffen Bruun, bass). This is five minutes of magic:
The chorus only sings in one movement, the final one, "There's a fleet of floating islands," rousing in extremis but with an element of a Bach chorale about it:
The recording of this DaCapo SACD is faultless, present and yet not spotlit.
Worth mentioning that a selection of music from The Mother is on Rikke Sandberg's superb conspectus of Nielsen piano music on OUR Recordings, a 3-CD set well worth obtaining).
The Mother is available at Amazon here; the Sandberg is available from June 6 here in the UK on Amazon (I reviewed it a while ago for America, interviewing Sandberg in the process). iDagio here.
