#christiansinding — Public Fediverse posts

Musical Interlude: Listened to a composer I was unfamiliar with today, and liked him a lot. Norwegian Christian Sinding is often viewed as the successor to Edvard Grieg, but I enjoy him more. His reputation in Norway suffered because he was supposed to be a member of the Nazi party, but it turns out he was suffering from dementia at the time (he died in 1941) and was being used and manipulated for the sake of PR. Before the onset of dementia he'd been an opponent of the Nazis and had fought for the rights of Jewish musicians. These days he's being rediscovered and his reputation rehabilitated.

"Symphony No.1," composed by Christian Sinding, performed by the NDR Radiophilharmonie Hannover.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaY5Q42px90

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🧵 3/4

Before "La Princesa de la Luna", KMFA played Christian Sinding's Symphony No. 4, rhapsody for orchestra (‘Frost and Spring’), Op. 129 (1936).

I only knew the Norwegian Sinding (1856 - 1941) through his "Rustle of Spring" (Frühlingsrauschen), a short piece for piano that later became an emblem of middlebrow salon music.

Although Sinding was from Norway, he spent much of his career in Germany, so it is not surprising that the symphony I heard earlier sounded distinctly Wagnerian and Straussian at points.

It's the sort of late romantic music that twentieth century modernists deplored. Sinding's reputation was not helped by his enrollment in the Nasjonal Samling, the party of Vidkun Quisling, the Nazi collaborator who headed a puppet government during the German occupation of Norway. Recent research has brought forth evidence that this enrollment was made without the sick and aged composer's knowledge in the last weeks of his life, but this revelation came too late to save his work from effective banishment from the Norwegian airwaves in the postwar years.

Having a largely forgotten piece like this broadcast reflects well on KMFA. Although I doubt that I will be playing it again much, I was pleased to have heard it and to have been spurred to learn a smidgeon of Norwegian musical history.

https://youtu.be/V6GzHaOuVkc?si=Hy140WgavVcMMDFn

#ChristianSinding #SymphonyNo4 #NorwegianMusic #Norway #KMFA #ClassicalMusic #LateRomanticMusic