Langgaard: Music Of The Spheres/Four Tone Pictures
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Composer: Rued LanggaardConductor: Gennady Rozhdestvensky
Performer: Gitta-Maria Sjoberg
Edition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 1997-04-22
Music Label: Chandos
Soundtracks:
- Sfaerernes Musik (Music Of The Spheres): Like Sunbeams On A Coffin Decorated With Sweet Smelling Flowers -
- Sfaerernes Musik (Music Of The Spheres): Like The Twinklying Of Stars In The Blue Sky At Sunset -
- Sfaerernes Musik (Music Of The Spheres): Like Light And The Depths
- Sfaerernes Musik (Music Of The Spheres): Like The Refraction Of Sunbeams In The Waves
- Sfaerernes Musik (Music Of The Spheres): Like The Twinkling Of A Pearl Of Dew In The Sun On A Beautiful Summer's Morning
- Sfaerernes Musik (Music Of The Spheres): Longing - Despair - Ecstasy
- Sfaerernes Musik (Music Of The Spheres): Soul Of The World - Abyss - All Soul's Day
- Sfaerernes Musik (Music Of The Spheres): I Wish...!
- Sfaerernes Musik (Music Of The Spheres): Chaos - Ruin - Far And Near -
- Sfaerernes Musik (Music Of The Spheres): Flowers Wither
- Sfaerernes Musik (Music Of The Spheres): Glimpse Of The Sun Through Tears -
- Sfaerernes Musik (Music Of The Spheres): Bells Pealing: Look Here He Comes!
- Sfaerernes Musik (Music Of The Spheres): The Gospel Of Flowers - From The Far Distance -
- Sfaerernes Musik (Music Of The Spheres): The New Day -
- Sfaerernes Musik (Music Of The Spheres): The End: Antichrist - Christ
- Tonebilleder (Four Tone Pictures): I. Like Words For A Summer's Day Saga
- Tonebilleder (Four Tone Pictures): II. A Scent Of Mull And Mud
- Tonebilleder (Four Tone Pictures): III. A Golden Flake Hovers Above
- Tonebilleder (Four Tone Pictures): IV. The Flowering Summer Was Linked To The Harvest
Music reviews of Langgaard: Music Of The Spheres/Four Tone Pictures
Music Review: Exhilarating, Often Mindblowing Fun!
Rating: 5 Stars
This was another recommendation to broaden my musical horizons. I won't dwell on 20th century Danish composer Rued Langgaard's supposed bitterness toward his lifetime lack of renown and the success of his contemporary Carl Nielsen, only that it's an interesting footnote for the modern listener. I will say that Langgaard's Music of the Spheres from 1918 is an incredibly exhilarating indulgence, redolent of those "celestial" musical qualities one would think of being more akin to the post-WWII period and not necessarily The Great War -- one is immediately reminded of Ligeti's similar musical utterances of nearly fifty years hence, moreso than anything from Holst's The Planets. In fact, the CD notes by Bendt Viinholt Nielsen do bring up how Ligeti, upon first viewing the score while serving on a jury in 1968, openly stated how his and Langgaard's compositional techniques were so similar as to suggest that he might be a Langgaard imitator! We hear otherworldly tone clusters, predominately from the high strings and winds, as well as a colorful plethora of orchestral sounds from brass to organ to bells, often accented and offset by the omnipresent tympani. One can't help but think that Langgaard, in composing this work, was thinking well ahead of his time.
Toward the latter third of the roughly thirty-five minute work, whose many brief parts are given fanciful titles such as "Like Sunbeams on a Coffin Decorated with Sweet-Smelling Flowers", is the appearance of near nonsensical vocals from soprano and then chorus melodically repeating "Do re mi fa sol la-a!" as if we're being treated to a Freudian glimpse at composer's block. (Ever see Jack Nicholson at the typewriter in The Shining?) After a romantically tinged bit from the soprano, beautifully sung, the work ends with an exciting and colorful orchestral and choral apocalypse! One is hard-pressed to decipher an intelligible program in all this; however, I like how it's described in the notes as "a singular musical concept in which sound and space are in focus on behalf of a logical or organic form"...whatever in the cosmos THAT may mean! In any case, as I stated earlier, it's an indulgence, but it's still exhilarating and often mindblowing fun!
The Four Tone Pictures, dating from around the same period, are songs for soprano and orchestra which come from a different, more earthbound Late Romantic compositional realm, expressively sung by Sjöberg. They each carry titles and lyrics summoning nature and are thoroughly delightful. The entire CD is rendered in Chandos' finest, most vivid recorded sound.
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