Norwegian composer
Christian Sinding
's music, especially in smaller genres rather than the orchestral music he preferred, is performed frequently enough in Scandinavia but rarely elsewhere, and this
Capriccio
release of his four symphonies generated enough interest to put it on classical best-seller lists in early 2025.
Sinding
(1856-1941) came from the generation after
Edvard Grieg
but was less nationally inclined; he lived for much of his career in Germany and found models among the German symphonists, increasingly flavored by
Wagner
and
Richard Strauss
as he grew older. Perhaps the strongest and most concise work here, in just three movements, is the
Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 83
, which has a very
Brahms
ian feel. In his final swing at the fences, the
Symphony No. 4 in E flat major, Op. 129 ("Frost and Spring")
, first performed in 1936,
threw off fully the formal tradition, subtitling the work
Rhapsody for Orchestra
, constructing a sequence of seven connected movements that involve a piano and various other unusual instruments, and building up to a big conclusion; the model here was the tone poems of
. Not everyone will like it, but it is not dull. The best feature of
's language is his ability to keep attractive melodies coming, and the strength of conductor
Karl-Heinz Steffens
, leading the
Norrköping Symphony Orchestra
, is his way of giving sufficient space to these. Nobody is claiming that
is a neglected top master, but the music here is listenable throughout, and it is played by people who love it and have studied it well. ~ James Manheim