Thomas Jensen (conductor)
Legacy - Volume 8
City of Aarhus Orchestra
rec. 1948-57, Tono Studios, Aarhus Hallen, Aarhus University Main Hall, Scala Aarhus, Aarhus Theatre
DANACORD DACOCD918 [78:32 + 79:04]
Thomas Jensen’s recordings with the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra are well known but his tranche of discs made with the City of Aarhus Orchestra had their origins deep in the 1920s when he was appointed to the position of conductor of the Philharmonic Society in the city. In 1935 – the year of his debut with the Danish Radio
this became, under Jensen’s direction, the Aarhus Civic Orchestra. Though he co-directed the Danish Radio he wasn’t to become its permanent conductor until 1957 so his career as conductor in both Aarhus and Copenhagen ran concurrently.
The Aarhus commercial 78s contained in the first disc of this two disc set – priced ‘as for one’
- are of lighter repertoire and were recorded between 1948 and 1951. They were the first recordings to have been made outside Copenhagen and acted as a splendid showcase for Jensen’s work in Aarhus. They were made by the national label, Tono, whose recordings were of sufficiently high standard for some of them to have been picked up by Mercury and issued in America.
The genesis had been the idea to promote Danish music, so in 1948 Kuhlau’s overture to the play William Shakespeare was selected and its coupling was a new work, two small movements from Svend Erik Tarp’s charming Suite on Old Danish Folk Songs. Other works were also recorded, and the successful reception of these recordings led to a return visit to the city by Tono in 1951. The Aarhus orchestra couldn’t match the string heft of the Danish Radio but it had finesse and had been well trained by Jensen. Its Kulhau is a fine example of idiomatic phrasing, even if the brass tone is swimmy. There’s an affectionate brace of Elgar in the form of Salut d’amour and the Serenade for Strings, touchingly phrased if undernourished in string tone – which gives it a rather more intimate quality, halfway between the orchestral hall and the chamber concert.
Jensen proves a quite characterful conductor of French music, notably Massenet’s ballet music from Le Cid and he and the orchestra dish up some Pops in the form of Marche slave, the Sabre Dance and the Dance of the Comedians. It’s to the Tono engineers’ credit that these, and especially the Tchaikovsky, don’t sound too desperately underpowered. Jensen was adept at dance music, notably waltzes, and his Strauss pairing is creditable and reminds one of his sterling efforts at the Tivoli in the music of Lumbye.
Disc 2 finds conductor and orchestra in live concerts aired by the Danish Broadcasting Corporation and given in a variety of Aarhus locations. There are two main works, Dvořák’s Ninth Symphony and Haydn’s D major keyboard concerto, with pianist John Damgaard. The symphony concert dates from 1950 and was held in the Aarhus Hellen, which could seat over 3,000. The hall and its acoustic do no favours to the orchestra which according to Claus Byrith’s portion of the booklet notes – the remainder is the joint work of Martin Grabau and Peter Quantrill – consisted then of only 32 musicians ‘not counting assistants’. Jensen had his own set of acetates cut and this is what Danacord has had access to. It’s hard to say how big the orchestra is because everything gets swirled up in the vast hall. Balances are erratic, brass tending to swamp the strings – easy to happen if your string section is small – and so this is best considered a souvenir of the Arhus and Jensen. The concerto was recorded in 1957 in the much more congenial main hall of Aarhus University The small orchestra is appropriate for the work and the 15-year-old Damgaard is a fluent, lively player. It’s fortunate that his parents had a record cut of the broadcast. On 20 December 1955, Jensen and the orchestra gave the inaugural concert at another venue, the Scala, which was a combined cinema and concert hall. As Byrith notes, reverberation is very short and once again brass dominates, which is unfortunate given one of the two works preserved here, Kulhau’s The Elf Hill overture. Sibelius’ Andante festive emerges unscathed in that respect of course, but the cold acoustic doesn’t help it.
The final work is Nielsen’s First Symphony but represented here only by its first movement at a concert given at the Aarhus Theatre in 1951. This was another poor venue for recording purposes with an acoustic that manages to be both congealed and dead, but Jensen and the orchestra play with spirit and control. There was as yet no commercial recording of the symphony. As is the case with other examples on this second disc, the recording comes from Jensen’s own archive.
Denmark’s second largest city experienced its fair share of problems when it came to sympathetic venues for its orchestra. Even though Jensen was to leave the city, frustrated and disappointed by these and other problems, he returned, as the concerts on disc two show. The commercial Tonos are released for the first time en bloc and the concerts have never before been made available. Great production values as usual from this source, and restoration has done the best it can for the broadcasts.
Jonathan Woolf
Contents
CD 1
Friedrich KUHLAU (1786-1832)
Overture: William Shakespeare, Op 74 [9:09]
Claude DEBUSSY (1862-1918)
Prélude ŕ l’apres-midi d’un faune [9:26]
Edward ELGAR (1857-1934)
Serenade for Strings in E minor, Op 20 [11:28]
Jules MASSENET (1842-1912)
Ballet Music from the opera Le Cid: I. Castilliane [2:52]: IV. Aubade [1:13]: VI. Madrilčne [0:54]: VII. Navarraise [2:52]
Pyotr Ilyich TCHAIKOVSKY (1840-1893)
Marche slave, Op 31 [8:47]
Bedrich SMETANA (1824-1884)
Dance of the Comedians from The Bartered Bride [3:14]
Aram Ilyich KHACHATURIAN (1903-1978)
Sabre Dance from Gayaneh [2:26]
Johann STRAUSS II (1825-1899)
Schatz-Walzer, Op 418 [7:08 ]
Tritsch-Tratsch Polka, Op 214 [8:05]
Johann STRAUSS (1804-1849)
Radetzky March, Op 228 [2:22]
Edward ELGAR
Salut d’ amour, Op 12 [2:59]
Svend Erik TARP (1908-1994)
From Suite on Old Danish Folk Songs: I. The Raven He Flies in the Evening [2:50]: III. Little Kirsten’s Dance [1:37]
Carl Christian MŘLLER (1823-1893)
Bataille March [2:39]
Aarhus Tappenstreg (Aarhus Tattoo) [2:25]
CD 2
Antonin DVOŘÁK (1841-1904)
Symphony No 9 in E minor, Op 95 "From the New World" [37:21]
Joseph HAYDN (1732-1809)
Piano Concerto in D Major, Hob XVIII [17:34]
John Damgaard (piano)
Jean SIBELIUS (1865-1957)
Andante festivo, JS34b [4:16]
Friedrich KUHLAU
Overture til Elverhřj (The Elf Hill) [10:45]
Carl NIELSEN (1865-1931)
Symphony No 1 in G minor, Op 7; I. Allegro orgoglioso [8:31]
