Located in the UK
Located in the USA
Located in Europe
- Herman D. Koppel
Symfoni nr.6, Op. 63 (1957)
(Symphony no.6)- Edition Wilhelm Hansen Copenhagen (World)
Programme Note
The Sixth Symphony is end-dated 11th February 1957. The symphony consists of one continuous progression but is subdivided formally into an introduction and four movements. It is Koppel's most concentrated symphony, and has the apt title Sinfonia Breve.
Koppel himself said that he wrote the symphony as relaxation after the work on the Fifth Symphony, but perhaps it is simply a matter of the Fifth Symphony functioning as a rebirth of Koppel the composer after a break of ten years. The concentrated and vital character of the Sixth Symphony at least makes it seem like a work that has had a flying start.
The symphony has a rather original form. Koppel begins with an Introduzione where what are to be the main subjects germinate in a thinly orchetrated texture. Even at this stage these exposed building-blocks signal the music's forbears in Bartók, Shostakovich and late Carl Nielsen. The most important motif is the one played immediately from the beginning as a dialogue between the first trumpet and the first clarinet. It functions as a motto or ritornello throughout the work, and is incidentally a twelve-ton row, although Koppel does not work dodecaphonically in the symphony.
Koppel dedicated the symphony to his wife and four children. It was given its first performance by the Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Mogens Wöldike on the occasion of the composer's fiftieth birthday in October 1958.
Text: Jens Cornelius, 2000
Koppel himself said that he wrote the symphony as relaxation after the work on the Fifth Symphony, but perhaps it is simply a matter of the Fifth Symphony functioning as a rebirth of Koppel the composer after a break of ten years. The concentrated and vital character of the Sixth Symphony at least makes it seem like a work that has had a flying start.
The symphony has a rather original form. Koppel begins with an Introduzione where what are to be the main subjects germinate in a thinly orchetrated texture. Even at this stage these exposed building-blocks signal the music's forbears in Bartók, Shostakovich and late Carl Nielsen. The most important motif is the one played immediately from the beginning as a dialogue between the first trumpet and the first clarinet. It functions as a motto or ritornello throughout the work, and is incidentally a twelve-ton row, although Koppel does not work dodecaphonically in the symphony.
Koppel dedicated the symphony to his wife and four children. It was given its first performance by the Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Mogens Wöldike on the occasion of the composer's fiftieth birthday in October 1958.
Text: Jens Cornelius, 2000