Lance Friedel - Carl Nielsen: Orchestral Works (2005)

It may be that Carl Nielsen's sun has risen only to set again. The Danish composer seemed poised to break into the international big time back in the later years of the twentieth century with recordings of his symphonies by such noted non-Danish conductors as Barbirolli, Berglund, Bernstein, Blomstedt, Horenstein, Karajan, Rozhdestvensky, Salonen, and Saraste. But the twentieth century came and went and recording Nielsen seems to have come and gone with it. Since the start of the new century, only Osmo Vänskä and Douglas Bostock have recorded Nielsen's symphonies and there don't seem to be any younger conductors willing to take up the cause of Nielsen's orchestral music. No younger conductor, except American conductor Lance Freidel, who, with Denmark's Århus Symphony Orchestra, has released a disc of Nielsen's shorter orchestral works on the MSR Classics label. But while one can only admire Freidel's taste in music, this recording will be disappointing to Nielsen fans. It's not Freidel's fault: he clearly knows and loves Nielsen's music and ably balances its strong drama with its warm lyricism and its vivid colors with its driving rhythms. The fault is the Århus Symphony's: it sounds under-rehearsed -- listen to the scrappy strings in the Helios Overture -- under-involved -- listen to the wandering woodwinds in Pan and Syrinx -- and under-water -- listen to the soggy brass in Saga Drøm. Nor is Freidel -- nor Nielsen -- helped by MSR Classics' dim, gray sound. With a different orchestra on a different label, Freidel might measure up to his earlier competition, but with the Århus on MSR, his recording doesn't compare.