Symphony No. 6

The possibility of despair was confronted in Nielsen’s Fifth Symphony; now, in Symphony No. 6 (1924-25), it threatens to overwhelm the whole musical narrative. Nielsen initially intended to write something “more charming, smooth” than his earlier symphonies, but too many shadows had fallen across his life: a series of terrifying heart attacks, the collapse of his marriage and of his nationalist-humanist beliefs in the wake of World War I. If Nielsen intended to dispel the dark clouds in what he called his “Simple Symphony”, it seems the music had other ideas. There’s a touch of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf about the symphony’s opening, with its cheery glockenspiel chimes and jog-trotting folksy theme. But soon we enter haunted territory. The shocking, seismic climax has been compared to a heart attack, and its effect on the mood of the first movement is ultimately devastating. “Humoreske”, a weird woodwind puppet-dance (with derisive trombone yawns), follows. Then comes Nielsen’s bleakest slow movement, “Proposta seria”, in which tragic dignity yields to weird, hopeless meandering on muted violins. The following finale treats a half-folksy, half-snide bassoon theme to a kaleidoscope of crazed variations, viciously comic one moment, desperately sad the next. “I want to defy death,” Nielsen told a friend; yet in the bizarre tuba-plus-percussion variation near the end, and the manic fanfare that follows, it can feel as though nihilism has won. Does the scatological last-minute bassoon joke save the day? It’s an open question.