Svend Hvidtfelt Nielsen - Ophelia Dances (2019) [Hi-Res]

The idea of building great music from modest or fragmentary means has characterized the work of Nordic composers for generations. In Svend Hvidtfelt Nielsen’s (b. 1958) music, that idea finds a particularly exquisite and absolutely contemporary expression. In Toccata the music glances towards a filmic chase-down, whereas Nielsen in Ophelia Dances claims to ‘hear the dancing’ of that fragile character from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The album concludes with Nielsen’s single-movement symphony, Symphony No. 3, which sets in motion a cumulative journey upwards from low to high: a symphonic Tower of Babel, reaching for the heavens.

Svend Hvidtfelt Nielsen (organ)
Aarhus Symphony Orchestra
Ari Rasilainen (conductor)
Bjarke Mogensen (accordion)