When Danish composer Carl Nielsen finished his Third Symphony, he spoke of the first movement as “a gust of energy and life-affirmation blown out into the wide world” and called the finale of his Third Symphony “a hymn to work and the healthy activity of everyday life” – truly a sense of optimism all-too-rare for us denizens of the 21st century! So, why a four-hand arrangement of an orchestral score you ask? In the days before mechanical recordings, four-hand arrangements were both a delightful social activity and an invaluable means of making large-scale works available to gifted amateurs who might not otherwise have opportunity to hear them in concert as well as promote them to conductors and concert programmers. As pianist Rikke Sandberg and Nielsen scholar Niels Bo Foltmann describe in the booklet notes, the discovery of the manuscript of Nielsen’s OWN arrangement of the “Sinfonia Espansiva” was itself a tale of luck and diligent librarianship.

Also included on this all world-premiere recording album are two works from Nielsen’s opera Saul & David, arranged by Nielsen for piano duet, and an oddity recently discovered in the archives of the Tivoli Amusement Park, the original four-handed sketch for the Højby Rifle Club March composed by Nielsen’s father, and arranged by Carl Nielsen/Kristoffer Hyldig.

We hope that you will enjoy this first recording of Carl Nielsen’s own four-handed piano music arrangement of his orchestral works, brought brilliantly to life through the musicianship and scholarship of Rikke Sandberg and Kristoffer Hyldig.