Gade: Comala

Laurence Equilbey, Danish National Concert Choir, Danish National Symphony Orchestra

Released on 16/02/2018 by Dacapo
Main artists: Danish National Symphony Orchestra
Genre: Choral Music (Choirs)

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The idea of the Scottish Highlands has been an important source of inspiration for many composers, especially in the first half of the nineteenth century. The best known examples are probably Mendelssohn’s overture The Hebrides and his ‘Scottish’ symphony. The young Niels Gade – perhaps with Mendelssohn as his direct model – himself wrote his way into the same tradition with his breakthrough work Echoes of Ossian Op. 1 (1840- 1841) and the concert overture In the Highlands (1844). A common point of departure for many of the time’s ‘Scottish’ compositions was the poems that James Macpherson published as from 1760, and which he claimed could be traced directly back to the more or less legendary Celtic bard Ossian.

Gade’s so-called ‘dramatic poem’ Comala Op. 12 is such an Ossianic composition, which can be described as a secular cantata for vocal soloists, choir and orchestra. The work was written in the winter of 1845-1846, while Gade was staying in Leipzig. He knew the Ossian poems in the Danish translation, but for the planned choral work he had one of his acquaintances in Leipzig write a German libretto. Gade himself conducted the first performance at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig in March 1846. He wrote rather euphorically home to his parents in Copenhagen that the performance had been such a great success that it was repeated in a subscription concert at the same place just three days later. According to Robert Schumann’s diary, Mendelssohn described Comala as melodious with beautiful features, but typified by a certain immaturity: enthusiasm alone will not do, as he is said to have put it. Schumann on the other hand was entirely enthusiastic, and regarded it as nothing less than the “most significant of recent times”, and “the only one that deserves to be crowned with laurels once again”. Indeed Schumann himself also conducted Comala on several occasions. However the success of the work was far more modest in Denmark than abroad. That Comala must nevertheless be counted among Gade’s most important works, even though it seems gradually to have been more or less forgotten or overshadowed by other compositions. Gade’s bicentenary in 2017 thus seemed to be an appropriate occasion for reviving the work – now in the original German version, which was the one known and appreciated internationally in the composer’s own time. © SM/Qobuz

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Gade: Comala

Danish National Symphony Orchestra

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Comala, Op. 12 (Niels Gade)

Introduction

Danish National Symphony Orchestra