Nielsen - Flute and Clarinet Concertos review | Andrew Clements's classical album of the week

The Guardian 0

Joséphine Olech/Blaž Šparovec/Odense SO/Anna Skryleva
(Orchid Classics, two CDs)
The Carl Nielsen International Competition winners get the personality of the Danish composer’s last large-scale orchestral pieces spot on

In 1921, Carl Nielsen heard the Copenhagen Wind Quintet for the first time and was bowled over by the sheer musicality of their playing. The following year he composed a wind quintet for the group, which ends with a set of variations that depict the characters of the members in turn, and announced that he planned to write a solo concerto for each of them, too. But he only managed to complete two of those concertos, the work for flute in 1926 and for clarinet two years later, before his death in 1931. They were his last large-scale orchestral pieces, and continue to show the influences of modernism that had already appeared in his final symphony, the Sixth.