Selim Palmgren - Complete Piano Concertos

Selim PALMGREN (1878-1951)

Complete Piano Concertos

Piano Concerto No. 1, Op. 13

Piano Concerto No. 2, Op. 33 "The River"

Piano Concerto No. 3, Op. 41 "Metamorphoses"

Piano Sonata In D Minor, Op. 11

Piano Concerto No. 4, Op. 85 "April"

Piano Concerto No. 5, Op. 99

Pictures From Finland, Op. 24

Eero Heinonen (piano) 

Raija Kerppo (piano) 

Juhani Lagerspetz (piano) 

 Matti Raekallio (piano) 

Turku Philharmonic Orchestra

Jacques Mercier

Piano Concertos 2, 3 & 5 recorded at Turku Concert Hall, September 1989;

Piano Concertos No. 1 recorded at Turku Concert Hall, April 28-29 1992;

Piano Concertos No. 4 & Pictures recorded at Turku Concert Hall, April 23-25 1992.

Selim Gustaf Adolf Palmgren (16 February 1878 – 13 December 1951)  Palmgren was born in Pori, Finland, February 16, 1878. He studied at the Conservatory in Helsinki from 1895 to 1899, then continued his piano studies in Berlin with Ansorge, Berger and Busoni. He conducted choral and orchestral societies in his own country and made several very successful concert tours as a pianist in the principal cities of Finland and Scandinavia, appearing also as a visiting conductor. In 1921, he went to the United States, where he taught composition at the Eastman School of Music, later returning to Finland, where he died in Helsinki, aged 73.

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Although our knowledge of Nordic composers seems now to circle around Nielsen, Grieg, and Sibelius, the latter two who trained in the German and Austrian tradition, there were also other composers, such as the Finnish composer Selim Palmgren (1878-1951), who we should also consider.

Professionally, he studied in Berlin with Konrad Ansorge, who had been a student of Liszt, and Ferruccio Busoni. He was a touring pianist, a choral and orchestral conductor and taught at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester (1921-1926), NY. As a composer, he wrote in all genres, including over 300 pieces for piano and five piano concertos that were widely performed at the time by some of the great pianists, including Ignaz Friedman, Myra Hess, Wilhelm Backhaus, and Benno Moiseiwitsch. In his memoirs, written before WWI, he said that his music had already been performed in places as exotic as ‘Florida, Java, and even as far as Ceylon.’ His contemporaries called him the ‘Chopin of the North’ (Pohjolan Chopiniksi) and his work owes a great deal to Debussy and musical impressionism.

Little of his work has remained in the repertoire in the 70 years since his death. Part of the problem is that Palmgren himself did little to promote his works, there’s no complete catalogue of his works, and many of his works are undated and still remain in manuscript. Rather than taking Palmgren’s own self-description of himself merely as ‘a musician,’ we should consider him a composer of ‘international significance who simply lacked time to write a bigger number of works.’ In addition to his own career as a pianist and composer, he was also principle conductor of the Turku Philharmonic (1909-1912) and a guest conductor of the Helsinki Philharmonic, and an active music critic.