Nielsen: Symphony No. 6 & Commotio

Marking the 100th anniversary of Carl Nielsen’s Sixth – and last – Symphony, conductor Ryan Wigglesworth joins Royal Academy of Music’s outstanding young musicians to revisit the composer’s later period. Nielsen: Symphony No. 6 & Commotio showcases two works by Nielsen in two spellbinding arrangements by fellow-Dane Hans Abrahamsen.

The No 6 ‘Sinfonia semplice’, written during a period of declining health, is viewed by some as a strongly ironic work. However, its lightness is also deeply sincere. With its crystalline weightlessness, Abrahamsen’s chamber arrangement reclaims both the quizzical spirit and sense of fragility in the original.

Commotio was Nielsen’s last major work, and modelled after the organ music of such composers as Buxtehude and J. S. Bach. Abrahamsen’s arrangement untangles its dense texture and harks back to Baroque instrumentation and sonorities. The result is a sound-world that defies chronology – a conversation across centuries.