Carl Nielsen’s Fantasy Pieces for Oboe and Piano were composed in 1889/90. Having just gained a position as a violinist in the Royal Danish Orchestra, Nielsen had already experienced success with his String Suite op. 1 both as a composer and as a conductor. Several sketches and autographs bear witness to his intensive work on these contrasting pieces for oboe, which were to appear in 1890 as his Opus 2. The two movements, Romance and Humoreske, are dedicated to the oboist Olivo Krause who played in the royal orchestra. His beautiful tone and virtuosic technique probably played no small part in the fact that these miniatures by the “young, talented composer” took the public and critics by storm at their first performance in March 1891.
Content/Details
- Fantasy Pieces op. 2
- ABRSM: Oboe Grade 6 (recommended)
ABRSM: Oboe Grade 7 (recommended)
Youtube
Preface
Carl Nielsen (1865 – 1931) had just begun to stake his claim as one of the most important and successful Danish composers when he wrote the two Fantasy Pieces op. 2 for oboe and piano in 1889/90. His first public appearances were well received by the press and the public, and in 1889 he co-founded a chamber-music society of young composers called “Symphonia”. That … more
Critical Commentary
About the composer
Carl Nielsen
The considerable output of the most important of Danish composers comprises all the usual genres: two operas, incidental music, numerous choral works, around 200 songs, six symphonies, three concerti, chamber music, piano works. His oeuvre is marked by an engagement with Renaissance vocal polyphony that he combines with a progressive harmonic language.
| 1865 | Born into the family of a day laborer and house painter in Sortelung (Funen) on June 9. At age six he plays the violin, performs with his father as a musician at village festivals, and becomes acquainted with the classics in the orchestra of the Music Society. In 1879 joined the military band of the Sixteenth Battalion in Odense; violin lessons. |
| 1884–86 | Studies in Copenhagen: violin (with Valdemar Tofte), piano (with Gottfred Matthison-Hansen), music theory (with J. P. E. Hartmann and Orla Rosenhoff), and music history (with Niels W. Gade). |
| 1886 | Second violinist in the Tivoli Park orchestra. |
| after 1887 | performance of his compositions, including the Suite for Strings, Op. 1. |
| 1889 | Second violinist in the Chapel Royal Orchestra. |
| 1890s | First volumes of songs on poems by Jens Peter Jacobsen (Opp. 4 and 6) and by Ludvig Holstein (Op. 10), with sometimes progressive harmonic language; later songs follow the ideal of the folk song. |
| 1896–97 | Cantata “Hymnus Amoris,” Op. 12, on a painting by Titian; study of Renaissance music. |
| 1891/92 | Symphony No. 1 in G minor, Op. 7, with tight motivic development. |
| 1901 | State stipend. The opera “Saul and David” is completed. |
| from 1903 | Contract with the music publisher Wilhelm Hansen. |
| 1906 | Premiere of the comic opera “Mascarade,” which becomes a major work in Danish operatic history. |
| 1908 | Second conductor at Copenhagen’s Royal Theatre. |
| 1915 | Concert conductor of the Music Society in Copenhagen. |
| 1922 | Neoclassical Wind Quintet, Op. 43, which becomes popular. |
| 1924/25 | Symphony No. 6 (‘Sinfonia semplice’), a tonally untethered and highly complex work scored with a large percussion section. |
| 1931 | Director of the Music Conservatory. Death in Copenhagen on October 3. |
About the authors
Klaus Schilde (Fingering)
Prof. Klaus Schilde, born in 1926, spent his childhood in Dresden. There he was greatly influenced by Walter Engel, who taught him the piano (Kodaly method), composition and violin. From 1946–1948 he studied at the music conservatory in Leipzig with Hugo Steurer. After moving to the west in 1952 he studied with Walter Gieseking and Edwin Fischer, as well as with Marguerite Long, Lucette Descaves and Nadia Boulanger in Paris.
Schilde won numerous prizes. From 1947 onwards he gave concerts as a soloist and chamber musician on almost every single continent with renowned orchestras. He taught at the music conservatories in East Berlin Detmold, West Berlin, Munich, Tokyo (Geidai) and Weimar. From 1988–1991 he was President of the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Munich, where he also taught for decades as a professor. There are numerous radio and television broadcasts with Klaus Schilde as well as CD recordings. Schilde has contributed fingerings to almost 100 Henle Urtext editions.
Prof. Klaus Schilde passed away on 10 December, 2020.