Historic Langgaard debut at BBC Proms

English critics agree: last week's BBC Proms concert was the definitive international breakthrough of the Danish outsider composer Rued Langgaard

Expectations were sky-high before last week's Danish guest appearance at this year's BBC Proms, which offered the first English performance of Rued Langgaard's Music of the Spheres after a delay of almost a century.

No fewer than 33 English critics had heralded their arrival at the concert in the Royal Albert Hall - a highly unusual number even for the world's biggest classical music festival. And now, the totality of concert reviews in newspapers and periodicals and on the Internet show that the Danish visit to the BBC Proms fulfilled the high expectations - and more. The concert has even been proclaimed a candidate for best BBC Prom of the year - out of the total of 76 concerts at the festival.

See extracts from the reviews below

Flying start for new CD

This month, Music of the Spheres appears on a new CD with the Proms team - the Danish National Symphony Orchestra and Choir conducted by Thomas Dausgaard with the soprano Inger Dam-Jensen as soloist. The CD has been recorded with a special surround sound technique to reflect Langgaard's magnificent use of an extended symphony orchestra, a special "distant orchestra" and vocal soloists.

Even before the concert last week the English CD outlets were reporting hundreds of sales of the CD as a result of the massive Proms flurry in the press and music periodicals. The picture is similar in several other territories that distribute Dacapo's recordings of Danish classical music.

Henrik Rørdam, CEO of the Danish national recording label Dacapo Records, which is releasing the new CD, says:

"Viewed with Danish eyes, the concert at the Royal Albert Hall last week was historic. The reviews show that Rued Langgaard is at last receiving the international recognition that many of us think he has long deserved. And we can already see that the CD recording of Music of the Spheres is doing splendidly in England and the USA. This shows that not only reviewers, but also ordinary music-lovers all over the world have embraced Langgaard's music, and that is of course particularly pleasing."

Read more and listen to excerpts

The critics wrote:

"Practised hands at Langgaard's strange art, Dausgaard's forces weaved through the music with authority and luminous beauty. I wouldn't have missed it for the world."
The Times  -  Read review

"A weird and wonderful triumph... Dausgaard and his Danish forces were able to produce some wonderfully unsettling moments of theatricality."
BBC Music Magazine Blog  -  Read review

"Dausgaard unfolded a magical sequence of atmospheres ... The music's shapelessness is both primeval and elegantly sculpted, while its animism brought the hall's distant nooks and crannies to life."
The Evening Standard  -  Read review

"Rued Langgaard's mystical composition was a revelation ... an almost otherworldly soundscape."
Musical Criticism  -  Read review

"The discovery for me was of Danish composer Rued Langgaard and his Music of the Spheres - episodes of differently beautiful textures and soundworlds that were mesmerising."
The Strad  -  Read review

"Transcendence and titillation - this concert had it all and, as such, could well prove to be the Prom of the season."
Classial Source  -  Read review

"This was the Prom I'd earmarked as the most unmissable event out of this year's 76 ... Did they deliver? Truly, madly, deeply. The closing sequences took us higher and further than we'd imagined possible."
The Arts Desk  -  Read review

"It may be hoped that the extremely positive reaction of the audience will encourage future performances of this work, aided by Dausgaard and the DNSO's soon-to-be-released recording of it"
ConcertoNet  -  Read review