NIELSEN THE SYMPHONIES - eClassical

solved its task. For it is actual life where the others merely portray life…’
The symphony enjoyed a mixed reception. Two and a half months later, how -
ever, when Nielsen again programmed the symphony – this time with a larger
and better orchestra – the leading Danish newspaper Politiken’s influential critic
succumbed totally: ‘For the first time he has been able to create a great work
that reaches up to the heavens while keeping both feet firmly planted on the
ground’. Nielsen kept the symphony in his active repertoire. Outside of Den -
mark he conducted it in Gothenburg and Stockholm (1918), Bremen (1922),
Lon don (1923) and Oslo (1926).
The short orchestral piece Pan and Syrinx was intended for a concert in
Copen hagen on 16th February 1918 but, only three weeks before the concert,
when Nielsen made the programme public, he had yet to compose a single note.
‘It is however quite clear in my mind, so it should be all right, and the copyist
has been warned that he will get it page by page’, Nielsen wrote to his friend
and colleague, the composer Wilhelm Stenhammar on 23rd January.
It was all right – but only barely: Nielsen finished the piece on 6th February.
The inspiration for it had come from reading the Metamorphoses by Ovid, and
he recounted the tale in a foreword to the score: ‘Among the satyrs and nymphs
in the tree-clad hills of Arcadia, the goat-footed Pan, god of the forest, notices
the nymph Syrinx and pursues her with dancing and with bleating praise. She is
frightened by the eager suitor and flees to a forested island. There, when escape
from her pursuer is no longer possible, the compassionate gods transform her
into a reed.’
The reviewers were quick to note that the composer appeared to have chart -
ed a course in the direction of Debussy and the French impressionists. Pan and
Syrinx was often performed in Nielsen’s lifetime, conducted both by him self
and by others.
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