Rued Langgaard is another of my recent discoveries; indeed, this Dacapo release will surely help to bring this dotty Dane to a much wider audience. These intriguing works are sometimes quixotic, even infuriating, Dausgaard and his orchestra revealing just how original these works really are. Try them if you dare! © MusicWeb International

As outsiders go, the Danish composer Rued Langgaard isn’t nearly as radical as, say, the Swiss artist-composer and asylum inmate Adolf Wolfli, whose dark temperament and tragic circumstances helped define the extremes of Art brut, or ‘outsider art’. As it happens, the last Dacapo disc to come my way was Per Nørgård’s extraordinary opera Der göttliche Tivoli, based on the tormented—but strangely uplifting—inner world of Herr Wolfli. For all his oddities, Langgaard is right at the other end of this spectrum, his music—as represented by the works on this disc—characterised by a compactness of structure and utterance. Make no mistake though, the idiom is clearly late-Romantic, just not of the extrovert, heart-on-sleeve variety one associates with Mahler, for instance.

Given that Music of the Spheres is scored for large orchestra, soprano soloist, chorus and ‘distant orchestra’, one might be forgiven for thinking it’s bound to be a variation on Mahler’s ‘singing universe’, a recap of the latter’s Symphony of a Thousand. It’s nothing of the kind; from its near-inaudible beginning and the first appearance of those tremolando strings and timp crescendi, it’s clear this is going to be a much more concentrated, interior piece. Indeed, Langgaard uses his forces sparingly throughout, and the result is a series of discrete—yet curiously connected—musical episodes, the strangeness of which piques one’s interest at every turn.

Yes, Music of the Spheres does have a specific programme, the Symbolist influence mirrored in titles such as: ‘Like sunbeams on a coffin decorated with sweet-smelling flowers’. They are highly evocative pointers, and sometimes oblique, but they don’t ‘unlock’ this music in any meaningful way. For instance, ‘Like stars twinkling in the blue sky at sunset’ could conceivably be suggested by those pulsing timp figures, but all notions of simple pictorialism are quickly dispersed when those drumbeats become darker and more insistent. In that sense, all that matters are the antinomies contained in the score itself, the inner dialectic if you like, and that needs no explanation.

Music of the Spheres has a constant flicker or pulse, a connective tissue that links all 15 sections. Dausgaard and his Danish orchestra manage the finely graded dynamics of Langgaard’s score very well indeed, so that even when we hit those nodal climaxes—the all-pervasive timp crescendo and brief flare of cymbals in ‘Longing—Despair—Ecstasy’—are powerful yet contained. Textures are transparent throughout, Dacapo’s exemplary Super Audio recording homing in on every nuance of this intriguing score. Moreover, the sense of a living, breathing acoustic—another characteristic of the very best SACDs—is ever present.

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Rued Langgaard, Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji, Havergal Brian, George Lloyd and Allan Pettersson were musical mavericks of the C20th. They were all more or less rejected by the artistic Establishments of their respective countries, condemned to lifetimes of struggle for recognition and vindication. Despite this, Langgaard in particular was a surprisingly prolific composer, with over 400 works to his credit. Many of these forgotten pieces are now coming to light for the first time in a marvellous ongoing recording project from Dacapo, the orchestral works being spearheaded by the indefatigable Dausgaard with the Danish National Symphony Orchestra.

This wonderfully strange music from everyone’s favorite Danish loner covers apocalyptic themes. Surprisingly sparse, The Music of the Spheres uses timpani barrages and gently spun tonal melodies to cast spells. Langgaard’s structures are wholly untraditional. Spinning motives foreshadow minimalism. There are few orchestral tuttis across the 15 sections. Massed violins, momentary organ, or a solo voice carry us through movements such as “Longing, Despair, Ecstasy,” “Chaos, Ruin, Far and Away,” and “Flowers wither.” One great climax results in an imponderably long-held chord followed by harp washes. One imagines veils continually lifting.

‘Blumen Welken’ is spring-like, with strings and bubbling woodwinds…‘Blick Durch Traenen auf die Sonne’…create a combination of Ives and ‘Saturn’ from Holst’s Planets. The Time of the End…sounds like the world being swept over by powerful flood waters, though the ending itself is quiet and resigned. From the Abyss…is rich, full, and Heaven-reaching. The sound is excellent, as are the notes.

To read the complete review, please visit American Record Guide online.

We are in the midst of a full-blown reexamination of the music of eccentric Danish composer Rued Langgaard. Fueled, in part, by an interest in revisiting neglected music for inclusion in a broader canon—finding masterpieces that were originally savaged by critics is a popular form of critical gotcha—this revival has been achieved largely through the advocacy of the Langgaard Foundation and Danish musicologist Bendt Viinholt Nielsen and the recordings of three enterprising labels: Danacord, Chandos, and most recently, Dacapo. Those who know of Langgaard’s sad story, with his dysfunctional personal life, his almost messianic sense of mission, his self-destructive anger at the neglect he suffered as a musician, his wildly impolitic attacks on the Danish musical establishment, and his decidedly non-mainstream religious beliefs, will likely doubt his sanity. (Nielsen’s extensive Langgaard Web site, langgaard.dk, is a near-inexhaustible resource for exploring this thought, and the online notes to the Dacapo recording of The Antichrist, dacapo-records.dk/recording-antikrist_1.aspx, are also most illuminating.) But critical opinion regarding his music has swung away from earlier dismissal toward rather enthusiastic acceptance. What had been seen as significant technical faults in his works are now reframed as winning qualities: primitive, impulsive, naive, indifferent to conventional ideas of form, volatile, ecstatic outsider, visionary genius.

Genius? There was undeniably talent. The early nature-inspired symphonies are unruly but promising, and met with some success in Germany, and to a lesser extent in Denmark. A few years later, Music of the Spheres (Sfærernes Musik), written between 1916 and 1918 and published in 1919, was well received when first performed in 1921 in Karlsruhe. This was the most promising period in Langgaard’s life, which also saw the composition of the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth symphonies—arguably his best work in that genre—several string quartets, as well as songs and choral music. During this period he often broke new ground, creating music that anticipated techniques later developed independently by such disparate composers as Hindemith, Ligeti, and the American minimalists. He was a skilled orchestrator, capable of creating sonic canvasses of remarkable beauty and grandeur. But he was an undisciplined talent, too little concerned with issues of structure and proportion, and uncritical in his thematic choices. Brilliance is too often undone by banality, inspiration is too often spoiled by pointless repetition or abrupt dismissal, and innovation too often gives way to pastiche.

It was this lack of judgment and discipline that frequently led to contemporary criticism. Here is a 1919 review by Langgard’s critical nemesis Gustav Hetsch, offered on Nielsen’s Web site as an example of the tone of the criticism he received: “In general the work.. as is usually the case with Langgaard, is wrongly conceived. It has an exceedingly pretentious formmore....

TC first encountered the Danish composer Rued Langgaard by reviewing a dvd of his opera “Antikrist,” which was marvelously gritty (Issue 176, Da Capo). In Issue 212, for the same label, a review appeared of a box containing his sixteen symphonies and several shorter works. These pieces had their moments, some very imaginative, some beautiful, but much that seemed filler, in a bland sort of tonal writing. His violin concerto, a 9-minute piece, was very original (Issue 218, Da Capo). All these pieces were conducted by Thomas Dausgaard with the Danish National Orchestra and Chorus. Now he leads Langgaard’s Music of the Spheres, The Time of the End and From the Abyss (hybrid SACD 6.220535). Music of the Spheres was written between 1916 and 1918; it lasts 40 minutes. It is in 15 movements, involving a soprano soloist (Inger Dam Jensen is fine) and a choir. It is as shocking for its time as Stravinsky’s “Sacre du Printemps,” but it doesn’t sound at all like Stravinsky’s masterpiece. Each movement consists of repeated fragments of motives; most of them are very soft, but include loud timpani over the softness. This accounts for its modernity. Ligeti remarked that Langgaard used the same effects that he did, in Music of the Spheres. The soloist and chorus are in the last movement only; those before it are instrumental. The choral writing at the end is very reminiscent of Holst’s “Planets,” Planets,” and the piece ends with a weird chord that gains in volume and then sinks to oblivion. The End of Time, for mezzo, tenor, baritone and chorus with orchestra, is basically a suite taken from his opera Antikrist. It is a stunning piece, containing the prelude to the opera and three arias. Hetna Regitze Bruun, Peter Lodahl and Johan Reuter are the excellent soloists. From the Abyss for chorus and orchestra was the last piece Langgaard wrote. It begins with funereal music but later broadens out into the rather predictable music he wrote later in life. The soloists, from the choir, are decent, as is the performance, but it is the least fetching piece on the disc. Dausgaard does the composer proud in these performances. Excellent sound.

“Un disco de Rued Langaard de obligada escucha”

Danish composer Rued Langgaard’s music has lain dormant for some time now, and is ripe for rediscovery. His “Music of the Spheres” for Orchestra, soprano and chorus was composed in 1916 when the composer was 26 years old, in thrall of the music of Scriabin, and already a budding visionary. His open, free, and sometimes static music calls to mind later sonic landscapes by Olivier Messiaen and Gyorgy Ligeti. Contains two other works for chorus and orchestra—“The Time of the End” and “From the Abyss.”

Gramophone Recommends

Marvellously recorded accounts of some of Langgaard’s finest scores