Fanfarer-Danmarks Radio for Orchestra BVN 351 was composed by Rued Langgaard in 1948. Instrumentation: 3.2.2.2/4.3.3.1/timp/2 perc/org/str. Parts are available on hire: hire@ewh.dk This extremely short orchestral piece was composed 7 May1948 in Ribe. Exactly between 5:45 and 6:45 in the morning(“normal time”). Rued Langgaard indicates the time of dayin both the sketch for the composition and the fair copy of thescore. Fair-copying of the score took place on 10 May 4:30 to6:00 in the morning (“summertime”) after it should be noted Langgaard had taken his obligatory morning constitutional inRibe (he suffered from insomnia and arose in the early morninghours). After the work’s final measure Langgaard wrote:“Short razor-sharp line of thought in music excluding allextraneous ‘developmental’ fussiness and with lightning fastmovement in all the parts”. The same day 10 May he sent thescore as program suggestion to the State Broadcasting Servicein Copenhagen under the title Denmark’s Radio Fandfare forGrand Orchestra – “fandfare” as a sarcastically meant spellingmistake with an allusion to “the Devil” (fanden = the Devil inDanish). Langgaard had as is known an ambivalent relationshipwith the State Broadcasting Service. The work was not acceptedand the score was therefore returned to Langgaard whonevertheless submitted it again. The State Broadcasting Serviceclearly regarded the piece as a joke from the composer’s side.When Langgaard died in 1952 the unperformed score was tobe found in broadcasting corporation’s music

Carl Nielsen (1865-1931) was a Danish musician often seen as his country’s greatest composer. While his operas and songs have become embedded within the cultural heritage in his native Denmark internationally he is better known for his symphonies and concertos distinguished by his prominent use of Brass instruments and dramatic changes in tonality.His Symphony No.3 (Op. 27 FS. 60) was composed in 1911 and is often subtitled Sinfonia Espansiva after the tempo designation of the first movement. Somewhat unusually the second movement includes vocal parts: wordless solos for Soprano and Baritone. Throughout Nielsenexpertly contrasts sections of blissful calm with passages of incredible angst creating a wonderfully moving masterpiece.

Carl Nielsen is now widely celebrated as Denmark’s greatest composer particularly for his symphonies which range from late Romantic explorations to more audacious neo-classicism in the later years. In the tone poem Pan and Syrinx Nielsen began to express some of his more adventurous harmonies and timbres which he then expressed more fully and in more abstract form in his masterpiece Fifth Symphony. Nielsen had an obsession with ancient Greece and its myths and the inspiration for Pan and Syrinx is drawn from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The story concerns the chaste nymph Syrinx who is chased by Pan to the river’s edge where the river nymphs grant her request for assistance bytransforming her into water reeds. From the reeds Pan fashioned his original set of panpipes. Nielsen’s short work expresses the natural world the conflict between the male and female forces the anxiety of chase and transformation and the unsettled ending of the tale. Nielsen frequently chose it for performance when he created a program of his own works. The Orchestral colours are original and striking and display the composer’s restless inventiveness.