Germana Porcu & Sara Costa - Nielsen: Complete Violin Sonatas (2018)

Carl (August) Nielsen (1865-1931) achieved international recognition as a composer only recently, and is regarded as Denmark’s most important and free-spirited early 20th-century symphonist along with his Finnish contemporary Sibelius. Nevertheless, some of his most appealing music for Danish performers is undeniably the chamber works, namely his string quintet, the four string quartets, the violin sonatas and numerous pieces dedicated to solo instruments. All these pieces were composed in the earlier and central stages of his career and are still well recognized as the highest achievement in national chamber music, being performed widely and attracting much interest from worldwide artists. His music covers a wide range of styles and forms, from Brahmsian idiom to a personal neo-classicism of his later years, from operas to solo chamber music; it is possible to claim that he used each style and all his time pursuing a “restless” research into a Danish national style that he helped to redefine. Nielsen’s career could be summed up first with his childhood (1865–84), his studies and early freelance years in Copenhagen (1884–9), the work as second violin in the Royal Chapel (1889–1905), his leading of the same orchestra (1905–14), the years of his marriage crisis (1914–22), and his last decade (1922–31). The compositions introduced in this CD date to the period 1884-1912, before the marital crisis that heavily influenced his later style. […]