Description
Johan Svendsen was one of the most important musical figures of the late Romantic period. His reputation spread rapidly after his international breakthrough in the late 1860s, and from then until 1883, when he became musical director at the Royal Opera House in Copenhagen, his fame as a composer grew steadily. His list of compositions includes, in addition to two fine symphonies, such orchestral masterworks as the four Norwegian Rhapsodies, Carnival in Paris, Festival Polonaise, Zorahayda, Norwegian Artists’ Carnival, and the famous Romance for Violin and Orchestra. Until about 1890 Svendsen was the Nordic composer whose works were performed most frequently outside Scandinavia. As a conductor he was also instrumental in launching the careers of his contemporaries, Carl Nielsen and Jean Sibelius. In 1898 Svendsen was invited to become musical director of both the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic orchestra. Svendsen, however, did not wish to risk his secure position in Copenhagen for an uncertain future in a foreign environment.
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Johan Svendsen (1840-1911) has been characterized as "the boy from the wrong side of the tracks who won both the kingdom and a bevy of princesses." Raised by his authoritarian father in a slum area of Christiania (now Oslo), Norway, in 1857 Johan experienced a "musical awakening" upon hearing Beethoven's Fifth Symphony for the first time. It was a defining moment, one that changed his life forever.In 1877 Svendsen, by then quite famous in Germany and Scandinavia, was invited to conduct a concert of his own works for King Oscar II and his guests at the royal palace in Oslo. A member of the orchestra later described the event: "It was an unpleasant, bitterly cold forenoon. . . . The musicians were not in very good spirits. . . . Then Svendsen jumped up on the cloth-bedecked conductor's platform and said in an authoritative voice: 'Gentlemen, when the royal entourage comes into this room, there is just one king, and that is - me.'" In 1883 he became musical director of the Royal Opera House in Copenhagen and during the ensuing years guest conducted virtually all of the major orchestras of Europe.Svendsen's opus list numbers just 33 works, but among them are some of the most stunningly beautiful compositions for orchestra by any Nordic composer. Svendsen went on to write two more symphonies (one of which was destroyed in a fit of anger by his - probably justifiably - jealous wife) in addition to such orchestral masterworks as the four Norwegian Rhapsodies, Carnival in Paris, Festival Polonaise, Zorahayda, Norwegian Artists' Carnival, and the famous Romance for Violin and Orchestra.
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