The graphics for this 2L release from Norway promise an ambitious program including probing the way Grieg, Sibelius, and Nielsen "were inspired by each other" and thus created the titular "northern timbre." That's a tall order inasmuch as when Grieg wrote his Violin Sonata No. 3 in C minor, Op. 45, Sibelius and Nielsen were just beginning their careers and were hardly in a position to inspire Grieg. And the Sibelius Danses champêtre, Op. 106, is a late, almost neoclassical work, and hardly the one you'd pick to demonstrate ...
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The graphics for this 2L release from Norway promise an ambitious program including probing the way Grieg, Sibelius, and Nielsen "were inspired by each other" and thus created the titular "northern timbre." That's a tall order inasmuch as when Grieg wrote his Violin Sonata No. 3 in C minor, Op. 45, Sibelius and Nielsen were just beginning their careers and were hardly in a position to inspire Grieg. And the Sibelius Danses champêtre, Op. 106, is a late, almost neoclassical work, and hardly the one you'd pick to demonstrate Sibelius' contribution to a pan-Nordic musical language. Instead what you get are clear performances of three rather underexposed Nordic violin works. Carl Nielsen's Violin Sonata No. 1 in A major, Op. 9, was indeed influenced by Grieg, both positively and in the sense of providing a model that the younger composer felt he had to destroy, and violinist Ragnhild Hemsing and pianist Tor Esepan Aspaas nicely catch the alternations between the two (sample the first movement). The...
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