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Carl Nielsen (1865-1931) The Ultimate Solo Piano Music Collection
Rikke Sandberg (piano)
rec. 2025, Queens Hall, The Royal Danish Library, Copenhagen, Denmark OUR Recordings 8.226939-41 [3 CDs: 205]
The collector who looks to add Carl Nielsen’s “complete” piano music to their library has quite a wide range of choice. Many of those performances and recordings are very good indeed. Martin Roscoe’s 2008 survey on Hyperion upholds the high standards of the label and performer. That was Hyperion’s second survey; I have not heard Mina Miller’s 1986 performances, later reissued on Danacord. I have also not heard Elisabeth Westenholz on BIS; as far back as 1980, the label was, as it often is, leading the way in Scandinavian repertoire. In 1997, when Naxos was a bargain label, Peter Seivewright’s traversal was a respectable choice. Anne Øland’s set has appeared on various labels, but again I am not familiar with it.

I enjoyed Herman D. Koppel’s 1981 set on Dacapo, when he, a composer of note himself, was in his 70s. He played this often awkward music with considerable skill and with the insight that a fellow composer can bring, especially given that he had studied this music with Nielsen himself. By that measure alone, his collection will retain an important position in the Nielsen piano discography.

With such high-calibre alternatives, what does Rikke Sandberg’s new “ultimate” collection actually offer? In simple terms, it includes around an hour’s worth of piano music not previously recorded. Much of that turns out to be Nielsen’s own arrangements of orchestral excerpts, usually from incidental music for theatre. Then there is a collection of student sketches and fragments brought together under the umbrella title of Souvenirs from Carl Nielsen, 11 small Piano Pieces.‘Small’ is the operative word. The longest piece lasts just 1:06, the shortest 0:19, and six of the rest around the 0:40 mark. These ‘new’ works are of interest to the Nielsen completist, but the value and significance of the set will revolve around the major works present in all of the performances I listed.

I had not heard Rikke Sandberg before. It is clear from her online biography and elsewhere that she is a prominent pianist, especially in Scandinavia. I find her playing on this set exceptionally idiomatic and sensitive. The OUR Recordings production team have supported her with a recording of great natural beauty. The Steinway D sounds magnificent, even-toned and warm across the entire note and dynamic range. The CDs appear to have been produced as normal red book discs, although the liner notes say they were “recorded in DXD audio format [and are] available in the Dolby Atmos Format on streaming services”. Apart from any tonal allure, what marks Sandberg’s playing as especially empathetic in this repertoire is her expressive freedom, and her highly effective rubato.

Nielsen is a quirky, often quixotic composer with a wide emotional range from deep introspection to life-affirming athleticism. Sandberg encompasses this range with technical ease and interpretative authority. This is equally true whether in the big serious works such as the wonderful Chaconne Op.32 or the slightest little miniature such as the Welcome to 20 Della Grazia, Little Marie! that weighs in at all of 0:22. I also rather like the programming of the three discs. The two pieces mentioned are placed alongside each other, with the miniature opening the entire set; this is a bold but wholly effective choice.

For listeners coming to Nielsen’s piano music after the orchestral works, and especially the six great symphonies, there is little on the same scale or emotional heft as those works. The three biggest piano works sit at the middle of his creative life: the Chaconne Op.32 (1916-1917), the Theme with Variations Op.40 (1917) and the Suite Op.45 (1919). That places them between the mighty 4th and 5th Symphonies. The really excellent booklet (in English only), packed with interesting detail, photographs and the pianist’s personal insights, notes how “in these works Nielsen established a distinctive, deeply personal piano style, characterized by strong contrasts”. It is curious why Nielsen, having set out musical values that echo his work in other genres, did not continue to develop them as he did elsewhere.

Nothing else in this set approaches the literal and expressive scale of these three works. But such is Nielsen’s genius that in a set of miniatures such as Piano Music for the Young and Old Op.53 he achieved such recognizably individual, interesting music within a very limited technical range. The concept of these 24 pieces in all the keys was to compose “easy, pedagogically useful small pieces […] expand the concept of five-finger piano pieces”. It is a delightful set of miniatures; only the last one takes more than three minutes while the rest are less than two. It appears in every traversal, and all the pianists I listed play them with total ease.

Again, I cannot help but feel that Sandberg finds an unmannered weight and expressive beauty that is genuinely remarkable. The closing Molto adagio – Allegretto commodo achieves a simple profundity that quite belies its original conception as a teaching piece. This is another fine example of the technical quality of this set; even the gentlest note of the Steinway is caught with elegant precision. Martin Roscoe is an attractively straightforward 2:45 in this movement, and is also recorded with unfussy clarity. Sandberg takes a far more expressive 3:23. Some listeners might feel she is seeking too much meaning where none resides, but I love the exploratory risks she takes. For reference, Koppel is much closer to Roscoe in a rather matter-of-fact approach.

Indeed, throughout this set there is a sense that Sandberg is willing to be more expressively interventionist than is often the case in this music. Because she and the production team back her choices with tonal beauty and technical poise I have to say that I find the results utterly convincing. If pushed, I would go as far as to say this set has convinced me of the consistent quality of Nielsen’s piano oeuvre. The third disc contains the bulk of the newly recorded material. It is genuinely interesting especially as, aside from Aladdin, Nielsen’s theatre scores are little known. There is a single BIS disc of Nielsen theatre music in its original orchestral/instrumental form, but there is little overlap with this programme. Sandberg is excellent again. Dance of the Morning Mists, a movement of the Aladdin Suite, is another lovely example of her poised yet poetic playing.
The rest of the Aladdin transcriptions are fairly straightforward arrangements that sound as though they were aimed at a domestic market rather than as “concert” arrangements. I cannot imagine them better played than here, but they are hardly revelatory. By that measure, the fragments that form the Souvenirs have a value and interest because they reveal glimpses of the young composer refining his craft. They are a welcome bonus but not the defining reason to purchase. Online stores are offering the set at around £27.50 on release. That places it as a few pounds more expensive than any of the competing two-disc sets. Here is how I would justify the extra outlay: we have a combination of the additional rare music material, the excellence of the engineering and presentation, and, most of all, the insight and brilliance of Rikke Sandberg’s playing. Nick Barnard, June 17th, 2026

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