Dag Wirén - Symphonies Nos. 4 & 5 (Thomas Dausgaard)

Information

Composer: Dag Wirén

• Symphony No. 4, Op. 27
• Symphony No. 5, Op. 38
• Ballet-Suite, Op. 24a 'Oscarsbalen'

Norrköping Symphony Orchestra

Thomas Dausgaard, conductor

Date: 1997

Label: CPO

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Review

Even at his roughest and toughest, twentieth century Swedish composer Dag Wirén is no bully boy modernist composer. While his writing is polished, his lines are clean and his shapes are focused, Wirén is still tonal, still melodic, and still readily comprehensible. This doesn't make Wirén any less a modernist -- his acerbic asides and mordant humor mark him out as a man of his time -- but clearly Milhaud meant more to him than Mahler, Hindemith meant more to him than Stravinsky, and Schoenberg meant nothing to him at all. In this well-chosen disc of two symphonies and a ballet suite by Wirén, Thomas Dausgaard and the Norrköping Symphony present a fair and persuasive case for the composer. If you tend to favor the lighter side of Prokofiev, try the sardonic Oscarbalen Suite with its perky themes and pungent colors. If you lean toward the more compact Walton, try symphonies No. 4 and No. 5 with their terse themes, concise forms, and driven tempos. If you tend to favor the massive and the monumental symphonies of Hilding Rosenberg or if you lean toward the anguished and agonized symphonies of Allan Pettersson, skip Dag Wirén. In comparison, his music may seem like too little and too light. Still, captured in CPO's clear sound, Dausgaard and the Norrköping Symphony's alert performances will be mandatory listening for fans of twentieth century Swedish orchestra, if only to put the symphonies of Rosenberg and Pettersson in context.

— James Leonard

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Dag Wirén (15 October 1905 – 19 April 1986) was a Swedish composer. He studied at the Royal College of Music, Stockholm from 1926 to 1931, then with Leonid Sabaneyev in Paris, where he also met Stravinsky. Wirén's music, known for its quality and listener-friendly style, spans from popular to serious works. His early pieces in Paris, like the Piano Trio and the Sinfonietta, are in a neoclassical style. Returning to Sweden, he went on to compose five symphonies, concertos and other orchestral works, as well as instrumental and chamber music. His style became more serious, perhaps under the influence of Sibelius.

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Thomas Dausgaard (born 4 July 1963 in Copenhagen) is a Danish conductor. He studied at the Royal Academy of Music in Copenhagen, with Norman Del Mar at the Royal College of Music in London, and in masterclasses with Franco Ferrara, Leonard Bernstein and Hiroyuki Iwaki. Dausgaard was chief conductor of the Swedish Chamber Orchestra (1997–2019), the Danish National Symphony Orchestra (2004–2011), the Seattle Symphony (2019–2022), and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra (2016–2022). He has recently been appointed as Principal Guest Conductor of the RTVE Symphony Orchestra.

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