Gade: Chamber Works Vol. 1

Gade, Niels Wilhelm, Grieg, Edvard

Ensemble MidtVest

CPO 777 164-2

At the young age of twenty-four Niels W. Gade celebrated his international breakthrough as a composer with the overture Echoes of Ossian, without ever having been »traded« as a child prodigy. At one blow this work (also on cpo: 7540118) earned Gade admission to the European music scene; and it is surely right to term him the father of Danish music, the man who secured his little country in the north and with it the often cited »Nordic tone« a place in Central European music history. With lightning speed he enjoyed a career not only as a composer and an educator at musical institutions of higher learning but also as the conductor of the Gewandhaus Orchestra, initially as an assistant conductor under Mendelssohn and then later as the director of the Gewandhaus Concerts. In April 1848 Gade returned to Denmark, where he systematically established himself as the leading figure in the country’s music world. Gade’s chamber music accounts for four of the total of almost forty volumes forming the complete edition of his works, on which the chamber compositions recorded here are based. Gade composed his Sextet in two versions. The first movement apparently presented him with considerably greater difficulties, and in the end he decided to replace it with a completely new composition. His first version is also heard on this CD, interpreted by the successful MidtVest Danish ensemble, which has also recorded wind chamber music by Carl Nielsen and Francis Poulenc for cpo.

CD x 1

CPO

4/2/15

761203716425