Flute Concerto - Nielsen (1865-1931)

Allegro moderato: Allegretto - Adagio ma non Troppo - Poco Adagio - Tempo di Marcia

Carl August Nielsen was born at Sortelung near Nørre Lyndelse on Funen, Denmark on the 9th June 1865 and died in Copenhagen on the 3rd October 1931. No composer could have sprung from humbler beginnings. Nielsen's father, a house painter, could barely support his large family but he did earn some extra income playing the violin and the cornet and mother was an amateur singer. Playing with the great woodpile outside his house, the three-year-old Carl found that striking different lengths and shapes of logs produced sounds of varying pitches. Soon he progressed to a small violin of his father's but he was enchanted when he discovered a piano at an aunt's house. He explained his delight that, unlike the violin, he did not have to search for the notes but that they were "in long shining rows before my very eyes; I could not only hear but also see them and I made one big discovery after another." These intimations of a special talent had to be tempered by mundane responsibilities such as herding geese yet, by the age of fourteen, he was proficient enough to be accepted as a bandsman in the Royal Danish Army. Here, at the same time as acquiring new instrumental skills, he was introduced to the core music of the classical tradition including that of Mozart, Beethoven and Bach.

At once Nielsen felt he had discovered a way to express his artistic feelings through composing and by 1884 had progressed enough to be awarded a scholarship to study violin and piano at the Copenhagen Conservatory of Music. Two years later he left the Conservatory to study both music and literature privately, supporting himself by playing the violin in the Tivoli Gardens Orchestra and the Royal Chapel Orchestra. His future was now financially secure with orchestral playing and conducting allowing him time to compose in earnest. Outside Denmark, Nielsen is best known for his six symphonies which gained wide attention when championed and recorded by Leonard Bernstein and Eugene Ormandy.

The Flute Concerto was composed with the eminent flautist Holger Gilbert-Jespersen in mind. In 1926 Nielsen spent the period from August to the middle of October in Italy staying with his daughter and son-in-law, conductor Emil Telmanyi. In September he wrote to a colleague, "The Flute Concerto is going well and just today I have finished the first movement which has come out very well: but it is very difficult for the soloist, so there will be something to study for the good Gilbert. This movement will be by far the most important." A further letter to Anton Svendsen says, "I have written a flute concerto, it lasts for about sixteen minutes: that is enough for a flute, which does not have the variety of a string instrument with bowings, double-stoppings, harmonics etc., isn't it? I have taken a great deal of trouble with it and hope it is not a total failure." The first performance was given by Gilbert-Jespersen with Telmanyi conducting on the 21st October at the Maison Gaveau, Salle des Concerts, Paris. French composer Arthur Honegger wrote, "The Flute Concerto is full of beautiful combinations for example the dialogue between flute and timpani or the bassoon…..it gives the impression of wholesomeness, power and superiority."

There is an obvious oddity in the scoring of the flute concerto: to the relatively modestly sized orchestra is added a bass trombone. Robert Simpson, who was a BBC producer for many years, a distinguished composer and leading authority on Nielsen, explains this paradox. "The Flute Concerto is one of the most endearing of all Nielsen's works and its humour is of the profoundest and most sympathetic kind. There are two movements only and the first spends all its time looking for a key. At first D minor is favoured confirmed by a second subject in F major. After enough of this theme to make it seem like the orthodox second group of a symphonic movement, there comes a dissonant passage, with the marked entry of none other than the flute's persona ingratissima, the bass trombone. This coarse individual spreads himself all over the score with a grotesque and aimless blether, as if looking for something he has never even remembered to forget, while the aristocratic flute expresses its outraged sensibilities.

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