Nielsen - San Francisco Symphony / Herbert Blomstedt ‎– Symphonies 1 & 6

This is my post from this week's Tuesday Blog.

For November, I’ve lined up a pair of Tuesday posts highlighting symphonies by a pair of Scandinavian composers. This week is a Cover 2 Cover share of a pair of Nielsen symphonies.

A few months back, I featured Nielsen’s Fourth symphony with Herbert Blomstedt and the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra - part of his earlier Nielsen cycle, recorded between 1973 and 1975, and for their time were the best available recordings of Nielsen's key works.

Later on digital format, Herbert Blomstedt recorded a second Nielsen cycle with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. Like its predecessor, it too has been unmatched for 30 years. That is quite an achievement for any conductor.

Today's featured disc includes the Symphonies Nos. 1 and 6 from that second cycle.

Nielsen wrote his first symphony at 27 years of age. Lyrically, Nielsen demonstrated his talents very successfully in his first symphony, and this at 27!

The Sixth Symphony may be partially autobiographical; the composer had just experienced a tremendous success with his Fifth symphony, but had also suffered a series of heart attacks He was to write several more works, but in the remaining six years of his life, the atmosphere of his works began to change.

Note to Collectors: This year we shared a pair of Nielsen symphonies (nos. 4 and 5) in the Vinyl’s Revenge series, and posted a Friday podcast containing the Third and the clarinet concerto. The second symphony was part of a Stokowski Friday montage a few years ago.

Happy Listening!

Carl NIELSEN (1865 –1931)
Symphony No. 1 in G minor, FS 16 (Op. 7)
Symphony No. 6 ("Sinfonia semplice"), FS 116
San Francisco Symphony
Herbert Blomstedt, conducting
Venue – Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco, September 1988.
London Records ‎– 425 607-2 [L|H]
Format: CD, Album
Released: 1989

Details - https://www.discogs.com/Nielsen-San-...lease/11740579 

Internet Archive URL - https://archive.org/details/01SymphonyNo.1InGMinorOp.7Fhttps://archive.org/details/01SymphonyNo.1InGMinorOp.7F