Interview, Sakari Oramo on Langgaard

The Wiener Philharmoniker are mostly known for their inimitable recordings of mainstream, often Germanic, repertoire. Their pedigree for Beethoven, Brahms, Wagner and others is second to none. Their latest release, though, steps well away from this well-trodden path and explores the music of the little-known Danish composer Rued Langgaard - an enigmatic and somewhat troubled man who was always at odds with the society around him, and whose music seems to swirl between Mahler, Scriabin and other Romantic styles.

I spoke to their conductor Sakari Oramo about Langgaard's links to Vienna, and the intriguing elements that came together to create his unique style.

The similarities with Mahler in Langgaard’s music are unmistakeable – particularly in the Second Symphony, with the inspiration from Goethe that it shares with Mahler’s Eighth, and the introduction of a soprano soloist paralleling the Fourth. Do you think Mahler is the main influence on Langgaard’s early style, or were other composers more important to him?

It’s an interesting question. I don’t know for definite whether he’d come across Mahler at this point but I feel like he must have done: all the indications are there, but Mahler was mostly known as a conductor in those days, and quite often he didn't conduct his own music. Langgaard was still very young when he wrote this piece; he’d had his first great success with the First Symphony (premiered by the Berliner Philharmoniker when he was 20!), and the Second Symphony was finished with the energy that occasion generated. Thinking about influences, Richard Strauss is another one: Langgaard's soprano part in the Second Symphony is quite Straussian, as is the drive and ethos in that piece.

The notes to this recording emphasise how well Langgaard was received in Germany and Austria, and how poorly his music was regarded in his native Denmark. Why do you think critics reacted so differently in different countries?

It’s very strange. The same happened to other composers around this time, too; I would hate to think that this is a particularly Scandinavian thing, but maybe it is! How much did Langgaard’s personality had to do with it? He was an intriguing composer, and even early on very outspoken and critical: the way he despised Carl Nielsen’s success and all the bitterness that came out of that later are well known, and his comments about performances of his own works are quite blunt, too. This may have had an effect.

Danish musical life was still quite bourgeois at the time, although influences from Germany had started to spread. Initially even Nielsen had a tricky reception in Denmark, but Langgaard’s case was really extreme. I don’t know any other case where the reaction at home and abroad was so diametrically opposite – and in countries that were very significant in the musical world, too, such as Germany.

The passion with which Denmark nowadays promotes Langgaard as one of their most significant cultural figures is very genuine, and I wish some other nations would do that as well with figures that have fallen out of common knowledge! In my view there’s nothing better for Langgaard’s reputation than a high-profile recording like this.

The Sixth Symphony is apocalyptic in its subject-matter, in the most literal sense of the word. Do you think there is a parallel with the earlier Scriabin’s interest in the mystical and in the “end of the age”, though perhaps from a different religious angle?

Langgaard appears to have been very religious and totally convinced of a Second Coming of Christ at any moment. The doom and gloom present in Scriabin's music is certainly here as well. There is also an uncanny resemblance to simultaneous developments in European music: the hyper-chromatic tension and linearity of the Sixth brings Hindemith into mind, and Janáček is just around the corner too, when the extra six trumpets placed behind the orchestra are extolling. Langgaard´s music is still always unlike anything else.

Studying and recording these works was quite a psychological tour de force. I think the orchestra felt it too, and I really have to admire the Wiener Philharmoniker – not just for their skill and the beauty of their sound, which are well known, but also the attitude towards both works. It was absolutely perfect. I was really happy at how fully they gave themselves to this music that had been unknown to them before.

Jacob Gade’s crowd-pleasing Tango Jalousie seems almost to be an afterthought on this album – though its popularity illustrates the marked contrast between Gade’s success and Langgaard’s constant struggles. What was the thinking behind including this piece?

Tango Jalousie is the piece that has brought more income to the Danish PRS than any other! Adding this piece to the recording makes the point of promoting Danish music internationally, and is at the same time a gesture to Gade. As a Finnish musician, I was very happy to take it on; there is the distinct phenomenon of Finnish tango, and Tango Jalousie is a well-known piece in Finland, even among people who wouldn’t consider themselves informed about music.

And I can tell you – being there as a Stehgeiger (a combination of orchestra leader and conductor) in front of the Wiener Philharmoniker is quite something! You feel the incredible drive that comes from the orchestra.

What factors do you think have helped to revive Langgaard’s reputation and restore the music-loving public’s interest in his work in recent years?

There’s something about our time that leads people to look for phenomena that have fallen between the main styles we think of and therefore also fallen out of fashion. Langgaard has something very personal to offer, and whilst not pushing aside the well-known canon of symphonic works of that period, his music is refreshing and true to itself.