Violin Sonates, Vol. 2 (2004)

The sound of Rued Langgaard's music is unique and undefinable. His late violin sonatas were written in the mid-twentieth century, and look both forward and back. With their intimacy and sense of longing, the sonatas have a nostalgic character, yet Rued Langgaard was more than just a very late Late Romantic who cultivated musical peculiarities and moods from a bygone age; he was a profoundly original composer whose musical ideas and visionary music remain something unique today. Dacapo's new CD with Langgaard's late violin sonatas outstandingly demonstrates Rued Langgaard's radical originality. On the face of it the music can sound like Romantic pastiche, but one should not be fooled: Langgaard constantly bends and stretches the old forms and creates new interrelationships. One of the four sonatas, the Short Violin Sonata, has concentration of the musical material at its centre. Other sonatas show Langgaard's strongly religious, imagery-creating side.