Music of the Spheres

Ligeti

Night; Morning (Proms premiere)

Tchaikovsky

Violin Concerto in D major

Ligeti

Lux aeterna

Langgaard

Music of the Spheres (UK premiere)

Sibelius

Symphony No. 5 in E flat major

Henning Kraggerud (violin)
Inger Dam-Jensen (soprano)
Danish Radio Vocal Ensemble and Concert Chorus
Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra
Thomas Dausgaard (conductor)

Reviewed by:

Reviewed: 21 August, 2020
Venue:

Listen Again

In this Prom from the 2010 season, Thomas Dausgaard conducts his Danish forces in Tchaikovsky’s ever-captivating Violin Concerto – written for the composer’s young muse, the violinist Josef Kotek – and Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony, overwhelming in its nobly expansive final-movement ‘Swan Hymn’. Three short choral pieces by György Ligeti – including Lux aeterna, heard in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey – take us to ethereal heights, while Ligeti himself recognised the mesmeric, free-floating character of Rued Langgard’s 1918 Music of the Spheres as prefiguring his own style. Henning Kraggerud is the soloist in Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, and previous winner of the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition, Inger Dam-Jensen, sings in Langgaard’s kaleidoscopic masterpiece. Audiences at this landmark UK premiere left the hall with the sound of “heavenly” music, angel choirs and the sound of harps., ‘ in their ears.

Read Past Reviews on the Classical Source

(From the BBC Proms 2010, 11 August)

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