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Denmark’s great symphonist and national composer Carl Nielsen (1865-1931) sought out new musical paths until the end of his life. His last two symphonies, Nos. 5 and 6, complete the picture of the composer’s artistic development, which was always ahead of his surroundings. This recording by the New York Philharmonic and its music director Alan Gilbert sheds new light on the originally conceived, momentous struggle of the Fifth Symphony as well as the Sixth Symphony’s inscrutable irony, which was difficult to understand in its time but supplied succeeding generations of composers with symphonic fuel.