The next recording of The Nielsen Project — the Philharmonic's multi-year focus on Carl Nielsen — is out. On Denmark's Dacapo label and distributed by the Naxos group, it features Music Director Alan Gilbert and the New York Philharmonic's performances of Nielsen's Symphonies No. 1 and No. 4, The Inextinguishable. The recording is the second of four that will culminate in a boxed set coinciding with the 150th anniversary of the Danish composer's birth, June 9, 2015.
The recording is available for purchase and streaming on Amazon, iTunes, Spotify, and other major online music providers.
Music Director Alan Gilbert will sign copies of the CD following the performance of Nielsen's Maskarade Overture and Symphonies No. 5 and No. 6, Sinfonia semplice on October 2.
For more information about Carl Nielsen and The Nielsen Project, including photos and video, visit nyphil.org/nielsenproject.
Update:
In The New York Times' "Classical Critics Pick the Top Music Recordings of 2014," chief classical music critic Anthony Tommasini wrote, "Alan Gilbert again proves an inspired conductor of the visionary Danish composer Carl Nielsen in this impressive live recording with the New York Philharmonic. ... Here are gripping, insightful accounts of the First and Fourth Symphonies." In November, Tommasini wrote, in a New York Times Classical Playlist: "Sometimes a musician just 'gets' a composer’s music, for example, the conductor Alan Gilbert and the Danish composer Carl Nielsen (1865-1931). ... [H]e manages to make these scores seem structured and inevitable."
BBC Music magazine called the recording "fresh and daring," giving it a review of five out of five stars.
MusicWeb International wrote: "This is big-hearted music and Gilbert and the NYPO do it well."