Rikke Sandberg: Carl Nielsen: The Ultimate Solo Piano Collection
OUR Recordings

Rikke Sandberg's triple-CD recording of the complete solo piano works of Denmark composer Carl Nielsen (1865–1931) is truly a landmark event and remarkable achievement. No one would seem to have been better suited for the project than Sandberg, who began playing his music as a child and whose teachers form a continuum extending back to pianists for whom Nielsen originally wrote his works. Her unwavering commitment to the project has resulted in a collection that is significant not only for the calibre of its performances but for gathering into a single package the entirety of his solo piano material. Sandberg's playing is as eloquent as the effusive praise Danish critics and publications have lavished upon it.

Her approach, which enriches technical precision with a lucid grasp of a work's essence, is astute and borne out by her own observation that when performing Nielsen's music, maintaining “a slavishly metronomic tempo is rarely the solution, just as an overly romantic, rubato-heavy approach does not necessarily make the music easier to access or understand. The musician is quite simply forced to spend a great deal of time trying to find the way, to understand, to feel, to listen, and to sing along”—be responsive and attuned, in other words, which she unfailingly is, and trustful of her intuition.

Sandberg's artistry is rooted in the Romantic tradition, and her admired renderings of Brahms' music could be heard as a foundation she builds on when performing works by others, Nielsen included. The music presented on the collection resists easy categorization when its creation spans nearly four decades and ranges from fleeting miniatures and childlike pieces to a long-form piece such as the eighteen-minute Theme with Variations (1917). It's telling that the first two pieces emphasize that extreme contrast when the opening Welcome to 20 Della Grazia, Little Marie! is a blink-and-you'll-miss-it twenty seconds whereas the one following it is the eleven-minute Chaconne. Characteristic of his works is the utterly charming Piano Music for Young and Old, which comprises twenty-five study-like exercises that generally last no more than a minute at a time.

Regardless of differences in length and style, the works are distinguished by their creator's ever-fertile imagination, irreverent sensibility, and affection for folk-like simplicity. The music is sometimes stern but just as often endearingly playful. If the incredible breadth of the music makes it hard to pin Nielsen down, that ultimately proves to be one of the release's greatest strengths when one is struck by the sheer variety of what's presented. One won't come away from the set with a neatly packaged impression of the composer but will instead leave it awed by the range he demonstrated.

The number of highlight moments far exceeds the space available so brief commentaries will have to suffice. After the fresh (if ephemeral) breeze of Welcome to 20 Della Grazia, Little Marie!, Sandberg turns to the Chaconne, which by the composer's own admission used Bach's Chaconne in D minor (for solo violin) as a model. Following the introduction of the eight-bar chaconne theme, the piece introduces a second one during the first variation as a counterpoint and then works methodically through nineteen dramatically contrasting variations. In this early long-form setting, Sandberg's artistry is irrefutably evident, as are her nuanced touch and elegant phrasing. Whereas the Chaconne hews somewhat to traditional classical convention (though daring passages do arise), what follows often audaciously departs from it. Composed between 1887 and '90 and Nielsen's first published piano work, Five Piano Pieces vividly highlights the composer's distinctive melodic voice and imagination, be it the lamenting “Folk Tune,” devilish “Humoresque,” or mischievous “Elf's Dance.” Reverting to an orchestral format is the four-part Symphonic Suite, which suggests a strong Brahms influence and wends from the heavy-handed, chords-dominated “Intonation” movement to the subtler poetics of the more contrapuntal ones that follow. An impish “Allegretto,” expansive “Andante,” and lyrical “Finale” complete the work before the arrival of the eleven vignettes of Souvenirs and the twenty-five of Piano Music for Young and Old. Even though they're short in the extreme, the studies in these works consistently engage, be it the “Norwegian Folk Dance” and “A Little Piano Piece” from the former or the gently rhapsodic “Andantino quasi allegretto” and haunting “Poco lamentoso” from the 1930-composed latter, Nielsen's final published piano work.

The set's other discs are as packed with quality material that again reflects the vast range of Nielsen's expression. The 1928-composed Three Piano Pieces sees him venturing into atonality by merging it with traditional tonality, its “Allegro non Troppo” third movement even featuring a fugue subject built on the twelve tones of the chromatic scale (not as a Schoenberg-styled twelve-tone row, however). The monumental Theme with Variations was written immediately after Chaconne, but unlike it the variations in the longer work are audibly separated and thus register as distinct movements of varying character. In being so panoramic, one could regard the work as a microcosm of the set in general, even if the flavours of the collection in total far exceed those in this one work. Assumed to have been written for the composer's children, Humoresque-Bagatelles exudes charm in abundance, though a few of its six parts, as brief as they are, are technically challenging (e.g., “The Spinning Top”), and titles such as “The Jumping Jack” and “Doll's March” programmatically align to the writing and tone of the music. Written early, Two Character Pieces brings a lovely, even Brahmsian character to the set before the onset of the technically demanding six-part suite whose original subtitle “The Luciferian” the composer removed when his intended meaning, “light-bringing,” began to be usurped by “satanic.” After that work's polytonal drama, the central disc concludes on a lovely note with Nielsen's riff on a familiar melody from “Silent Night.”

Disc three separates itself from the others by featuring Nielsen's own piano arrangements of incidental music and original piano works for the theatre, including excerpts of material he composed for the play The Mother, which premiered at the Royal Theatre in January 1921. The beautiful “The mist is lifting” initiates Nielsen's six-part solo piano treatment on a high that the lighthearted “Gramophone-Waltz” and triumphal “March” sustain. Five short standalones follow that similarly draw from material Nielsen created for theatre productions. From the tragedy Hagbarth and Signe (about the impossible love between the Norwegian prince and Danish princess), we get the melancholy “Dance of the Handmaidens”; more emphatic by comparison is the prelude Nielsen composed for Holger Drachmann's Snefrid. Sandberg's collection concludes strongly with a 1921 suite of five dances derived from incidental music Nielsen wrote for a production of Aladdin at the Royal Theatre. Each tickles the ear in different ways, be it the impish “Chinese Dance,” macabre “Prisoners' Dance,” or rollicking “African Dance.” How pleasing that this voluminous set would end so soothingly with “Dance of the Morning Mists,” Sandberg's delicate touch on exquisite display.

No commentary on the project would be sufficient without acknowledging the classy presentation of the physical release, which houses an attractive booklet and three sleeved discs within a handsomely designed and sturdy case. It's a costly presentation but one befitting a recording of such value and significance, and the evidence at hand clearly argues that Sandberg is deserving of such treatment.

August 2026