NOSPR /Childress / de la Salle - NOSPR

‘Within your beginning lies the seed of your maturity,’ one might feel tempted to remark, especially when considering the formative works that launched the careers of three major composers. Amongst the three, the Danish creator Carl Nielsen proves to be more independent and delicate in his late Romantic idiom – on the very brink of modernism – than his great Finnish counterpart. The latter, when writing Symphony No I, still finds himself in search of a personal voice, though his goals are already clearly delineated. What remains audible here is a tinge of Richard Strauss or the echoes of Tchaikovsky, yet these are already molten in the crucible of the distinctive individualism that would come to define the singular symphonic landscape of Nordic luminosity.

In the same vein, Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No 1 in C major – which has been designated number one though chronologically it was composed as second – reveals a composer still under the influence of the mature style of Haydn, the teacher of the future greatest revolutionary in music. The thematic clarity and vigorous energy, along with a late Classical piano texture that does not shy away from virtuosic flair, already testify to the composer’s true character. Once he finds the full emotional depth that will come to define him and transmutes dynamism and energy into passion, this character will dominate his compositions. For now, let us savour this morning sunlight, before the passion of the noonday heat turns into a full blaze.

Jakub Puchalski