Ludolf Nielsen - Lackschmi (Complete Ballet, Op.45)

Ludolf NIELSEN (1876-1939)

Overture From »Isabella« Op. 10 8:02

Lackschmi Or An Indian Love Tale (Complete Ballet In Two Acts Op. 45. Action From The Indian Saga Epoch)

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Werner Andreas Albert

Recording: ABC Music Centre, Studio 420, April 5–8, 2004

Ludolf Nielsen (1876-1939) is Denmark's 'other' Nielsen, outshone in many ways by his older (1861-1931) unrelated namesake, Carl Nielsen. He had a brief period of popularity in his home country during his lifetime, but his music was forgotten even in Denmark until fairly recently. Some of it has now been recorded to some acclaim on Denmark's national label, da capo, but this is the first, I believe, on another label. Werner Andreas Albert is noted for recording out-of-the-way repertoire -- the music of composers like Siegfried Wagner, Joachim Raff and Othmar Schoeck, among others -- and here he has recorded, with the Queensland Symphony (Brisbane), a couple of works by Nielsen that are attractive and immediately 'gettable.'

The big piece on this CD is the complete ballet 'Lackschmi' which was briefly popular in Copenhagen in the early 1920s and then never again heard until now. The music is an hourlong adventure in faux-orientalism. The ballet is set in India and the plot need not detain us for long. Just let it be said that it involves a slave girl, the two men who love her, a jealous rani, a fakir with a cobra that kills whoever possesses a green gem, and various complications. There are also 'lackshmi lamps' which, when set afloat on the river, predict the future. (Lackschmi [Lakshmi or Laxmi] is the goddess of wealth, light, wisdom and fortune, as well as luck, beauty and fertility.) Plenty of opportunity for intrigue, exotic dances and dancers, a part for a snake (a pretty ballerina who rises from the traditional cobra basket) and the like. The music itself is pretty, fairly easily to assimilate (although it was called difficult to understand in its day) and basically little more than that. In a sense it is light music that is immediately enjoyable and generally easily forgettable.

The big find here is the eight-minute overture to Nielsen's opera, 'Isbella.' It is almost Brucknerian in its luxuriant orchestration and features memorable tunes that are cleverly worked. It was a favorite of Nielsen's pupil, conductor Launy Grondahl, and he performed it often. I'd never heard it (or any of Nielsen's music) before but I am sure I'll go back to this overture again.

The performances here are first-rate. The Queensland Orchestra is clearly a superior ensemble and they give the music idiomatic performances.

Amazon review

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Denmark’s “other” Nielsen was a very good composer of attractive music in a late-Romantic style. The overture to Isbella, a one-acter presumably about some babe who comes to a bad end, is an attractive piece of reflective musical poetry featuring engaging writing for harp and woodwinds. It’s a touch anonymous in style perhaps, but it’s undeniably pretty. Lackschmi, though, is another matter entirely. It dates from the early 1920s and manages to sound evocatively Oriental but totally different from Nielsen’s (the other one’s) Aladdin music. There’s nothing not to like here: colorful dances, exotic scoring, and a plot that involves the usual love triangle, a snake-charmer, lots of rhythmically vigorous macho posturing between the principal male dancers, and a concluding immolation scene. It’s well played by the Queensland orchestra, and sympathetically conducted, though I could imagine even sharper rhythms and a richer ensemble tone at climaxes. The sound, save for a strangely forward harp in the tutti’s, is good. The piece is a real find.

David Hurwitz (ClassicsToday)