Clarinet Concerto

Instantly identifiable, Nielsen’s music is like that of no one else—the peculiar mix of jaunty peasant rhythms, neo-classical serenity and modernist aggression that runs through his Clarinet Concerto is a case in point. Written in 1928 when the composer was 63 and in poor health, it’s less a thing of radiant optimism than his music tends to be, with the intrusive presence of a snare-drum as an almost rival soloist, and a percussive spikiness as tonalities clash (between F major and E major) while the clarinet gets pushed toward the wilder, raucous edges of its soundworld. But at the same time there’s the purity and freshness of the Danish countryside that’s overwhelmingly ‘Nielsen’, with the opening motif of a rising fifth (its first note weighted like a folk-dance) that recurs across the music’s 30-minute, single-movement form. Nielsen made much of simple intervals, and he described the fifth as “most sublime joy”. Which it manages to be here: stubbornly bucolic in the face of all that drumming.