Nielsen: Symphonies Nos. 1 & 4

“Ruthless but innocent – like a child playing with dynamite” – thus wrote the Danish press at the first performance of Carl Nielsen’s Symphony No. 1 in 1894. This acclaimed recording cycle by the New York Philharmonic and Alan Gilbert shows Denmark’s national composer as one of the wildest and most dynamic composers of early modernism. On this issue, Nielsen’s impressive symphonic debut work is combined with the epoch-making 4th symphony “The Inextinguishable” written in the midst of the First World War and during a stormy period in the composer’s private life.