The Chamber Orchestra of Europe: Nordic Works at Dijon Opera

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A concert in the form of an invitation to set out on a voyage: Nordic works under the baton of a Danish conductor leading a European orchestra!

The Chamber Orchestra of Europe hasn’t neglected the northern parts of the continent of which it bears the name. With the Danish conductor Thomas Dausgaard they share with us two of the masterpieces that these musical lands have brought forth.

Sibelius’ Sixth and penultimate symphony is not his best known: in the shadow of its elder sibling, more immediately lyrical and contrasted, it has equally conquered the hearts of music lovers.

In complete clarity and halftones, with a luminous polyphony and modal harmonies worthy of Palestrina, pouring out a song ever gushing and limpid, this “pure water”, as Sibelius described it, harbours no less powerful storms grumbling in the depths of its current.

It is in Denmark, at Søllerød, where Grieg enjoyed the more meridional climate (in relative terms) than that of his native Norway, that he wrote the Concerto for piano, following the composer’s marriage the previous year to his cousin Nina Hagerup. A daughter, Alexandra, had just been born, and the work bears the traces of this youthful fervour, of the love and joys of fatherhood that inspired the composer during these weeks of happiness.

This magnificent concerto also harbors the signs of Grieg’s own musical evolution: the German influences from his years of study in Leipzig give way to the characteristic turns of his native country’s popular music, the accents of springar (a Norwegian dance) and the imitations of Hardangerfele (a typical Norwegian folk instrument).