The Arts Desk (UK)
Carl Nielsen: The Ultimate Solo Piano Collection Rikke Sandberg (OUR Recordings)

Good compilations of Nielsen’s piano music are available: I like Leif Ove Andsnes’ single disc collection, and Martin Roscoe’s excellent Hyperion double album presents what was previously thought to be the composer’s complete keyboard output. But Danish pianist Rikke Sandberg’s new box has three well-filled discs and really does contain everything, some of the new material made up of recently discovered piano transcriptions of orchestral pieces. If you’re a Nielsen newbie, start with CD3. Piano excerpts from Nielsen’s 1920 incidental music to the play The Mother were published shortly after the stage premiere, and they’re delightful. “The mist is lifting” has carved out an existence as a lilting duet for flute and harp but sounds equally delectable in piano form. Other movements include a catchy “Gramophone-Waltz” and a typically Nielsenian march. The gorgeous little “Elves Dance”, taken from the score to Sir Oluf he rides, is an expanded version of one of Nielsen’s early Five Piano Pieces (included on the first disc), and we get snippets from rarities like Hagbarth and Signe and Snefrid. Plus six dances from Aladdin, Sandberg just heavy-footed enough in the “Oriental Festival March” and suitably enigmatic in the “Hindu Dance”. If you know and love the familiar orchestral suite, you’ll need to hear this, Sandberg’s playing full of wit and colour. Like Sibelius, Nielsen was a brilliant miniaturist, and even the shortest works here sound utterly characteristic.
Disc 1 opens with a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it gem, the 22-second “Welcome to 20 Della Grazia, Little Marie!”, a musical greeting to Nielsen’s wife Anne-Marie after the couple had visited Naples in 2020. The Op. 8 Symphonic Suite has an impact that belies its modest size; the first movement’s “Intonation”, inspired by a favourite oak tree, lasts less than three minutes but feels epic in scope. Sandberg handles the big works very well: the mighty Op.32 Chaconne’s sequence of variations is mesmerising here, the music evaporating after 11 minutes until all that’s left is a pianissimo high D. It’s interesting to compare it with the Op. 40 Theme and Variations written shortly afterwards. Nielsen’s theme reflects his admiration for Brahms though the subsequent variations become increasingly outlandish (the work was composed in 1917). The last variation is terrifying, described by the composer as being like “the wild response of a man who fights with his back to an iceberg”, its final seconds offering some consolation. The Op. 45 Suite is a masterpiece, its six movements showing Nielsen’s harmonic language at its most adventurous. Try Sandberg in the remarkable third movement, directed to be played “with supreme calm and strength”, the thunderous neo-baroque opening thrilling.
Works like the Humoreske-Bagatelles offer light relief, six miniatures believed to have been written for Nielsen’s own children. And there’s his final published piano work, the Piano Music for Young and Old (1930), 25 “short and easy” pieces in every key intended “to expand the concept of five-finger piano pieces”. They’re like a Danish Mikrokosmos, Sandberg dispatching them with affection and incredible precision. Highlights include a delightful “Allegretto civettuolo” and a catchy, lopsided “Marcia di goffo.” There's loads more to explore. This is a life-enhancing box set, then, brilliantly engineered and superbly annotated. I’d come across Sandberg through OUR’s release of a two-piano version of Nielsen’s Sinfonia Espansiva (my favourite album of 2024), and this new release exceeded my expectations. Do read Sandberg's own essay in the booklet, her affection for this most likeable and humane of composers shining through. Graham Rickson, June 6th 2026