Nordic soundscapes – Tilling and Dausgaard

Nordic soundscapes in original version

Works from the late Romantic period require not only large forces but also the cultivation of an appropriate orchestral sound. In order to develop this, the Luzerner Sinfonieorchester works with different guest conductors according to the repertoire. Since 2011 the orchestra has been working on Nordic music with Dane Thomas Dausgaard, who – according to the Luzerner Zeitung – gave an exhilarating performance of Carl Nielsen’s Fourth Symphony at the KKL. This season’s Nordic programme also reaps the benefits of Dausgaard’s intensive study of Edvard Grieg and Jean Sibelius. Whereas Grieg’s “Peer Gynt” suites cloak Nordic melancholy in a fairytale soundworld, Dausgaard’s version arranges the movements of this incidental music – including the popular “Morning Mood” and Solveig’s Song” – according to purely musical facets. Sibelius spent years reworking his fifth symphony in reaction to the period of radical musical change at the beginning of the 20th century. Dausgaard conducts the Finnish composer’s work in its original version from 1915, which depicts Nordic soundscapes and impressions of nature with rich orchestral sonority.