Symphonies Vol 2 (Symphony Nos 7 & 4)

Christopher Hogwood conducts the Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra in Volume Two of their series of orchestral works by Gade.

This disc offers rarely recorded repertoire and contains the premiere recording of Gade's Concert Overture in C, and Symphonies Nos 4 and 7 are recorded for the first time from new, more authentic editions.

Gade ranks as the most important figure in nineteenth-century Danish music and is one of Denmark's best-kept secrets.

It is possible to detect both the influences of Mendelssohn and Schumann and traces of Scandinavian colour in Gade's works.

After winning a competition in 1840 with his overture Echoes of Ossian, Niels Wilhelm Gade went to Leipzig where he received much encouragement from Felix Mendelssohn. From 1844 to 1848 he was conductor (partly with Mendelssohn) of the Leipzig Gewandhaus concerts. At the outbreak of war between Germany and Denmark in 1848 he returned to Copenhagen where he became the acknowledged leader of his country's musical life.

Gade's Concert Overture No. 3 was written in Leipzig at the end of 1846 and first performed in 1847, conducted by the composer. The plainness of the title shows that Gade was turning away from the picturesque nature of his first two overtures, Echoes of Ossian and In the Highlands, and adopting a purely abstract approach.

Symphony No. 4 received its premiere in Copenhagen in November 1850. The work is dedicated to a symphonist of the older generation, Louis Spohr, and indeed has something of Spohr's smoothness of finish in its melodic lines and instrumental writing.

Symphony No. 7, one of the most popular of Gade's symphonies during his lifetime, was written in 1864, the same year in which Prussia seized the disputed territories of Schleswig-Holstein from Denmark. Gade was insistent that the work had not been influenced by this national disaster: in a letter he described the Seventh as 'a fresh and happy symphony' which 'has nothing to do with war or peace, and still less with politics'.

'The Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra plays impeccably, and Chandos' warm, rich recorded sound is very flattering and appropriate to this music.'
Fanfare on CHAN 9862 (Gade Symphonies, Volume 1)