Rued Langgaard was, initially anyway, an admirer of Carl Nielsen; but, as time went on and Nielsen’s international fame grew, Langgaard (whose compositions had been, for the most part ignored, even [especially?] in his native Denmark) came to dislike Nielsen’s music and to view it as the root cause of all that was of poor quality in Danish music.

Next week we’re listening to Nielsen’s 4th Symphony (The Inextinguishable) so I thought that, to redress what really is one of history’s injustices, that this week we might listen to Langgaard’s 4th (he wrote 16 symphonies!) together with music by Niels Gade and Poul Ruders.

And –courtesy of John and Alyson – for those fans amongst you of the 1965 Eurovision Song Contest’s Swedish entry (composed, if you remember, by Dag Wirén)…

w