Symfonieën Nrs 4, 5 & 6 (1992)

"Langgaard was nothing if not prolific. There are some 400 works in all. Regarded as eccentric during his lifetime (1893-1952), his music underwent neglect after some initial success and then enjoyed a posthumous vogue in the late 1960s. He has been hailed as a Danish Charles Ives or Havergal Brian, a comparison that is by no means inapt. These are very persuasive and sympathetic performances and very good recordings, but what of the music itself? For all his eclecticism his music exhibits some real qualities of imagination, vision even, alongside moments of conventional post-romantic rhetoric, yet there is no real symphonic coherence and little sense of 'Meisterschaft'. Those looking for the kind of musical nourishment and depthand above all, sheer musical concentration you find in Nielsen and other Scandinavian masters will look here in vain. But this is not to deny that there are many things in all three symphonies to interest and stimulate, alongside much that is overblown." (Robert Layton, Gramophone)

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