Tansman & Bacewicz: Piano Concertos

He was undoubtedly the greatest Danish pianist ever. His fame was legendary and he made some of the most impressive recordings for the Danish HMV and TONO label together with a giving concerts all over the world. His recorded legacy is among the most fascinating and we are proud to give you the 4th volume with never before published live recordings of Palmgren and Schubert. Volumes 1-3 confined themselves to studio recordings, whereas Volume 4 presents Schiøler in concert. The Second Piano Concerto by Selim Palmgren was performed during a Finnish tour undertaken in 1962 by the Danish State Radio Symphony Orchestra, in conjunction with a ‘Danish Week’ on Finnish radio. The piece was something of a calling-card for Schiøler on tour: in 1925 he had taken it to England, giving performances at the Henry Wood Proms and in Bournemouth under the baton of Sir Dan Godfrey. Cast as a single-movement rhapsody in a loose-limbed, high-Romantic idiom, the concerto was composed in1906-13, taking a Swedish folk dance as its principal melody, and carries a subtitle, ‘TheRiver’, which refers to the Kokemaienjoki flowing through the Bothnian town of Pori, where Palmgren was born and spent his early years.