Songs comprise a substantial part of Rued Langgaard’s earlier output, affording an overview of how his music evolved during his adolescence then into adulthood, besides underlining the development of an idiom whose individuality ultimately spilt over into wilful eccentricity.

This selection is judiciously chosen to illustrate Langgaard’s evolution over the decade from his 15th year. Songs from 1906 08 yield an easeful yet vulnerable charm, but it was his 1913 encounter with Dora From that left its irradicable mark on his thinking; something already evident in the ruminative poise of Four Songs after (mainly) Jens Peter Jacobsen (BVN67) but more so the five after Jenny Blicher-Clausen (BVN66; both 1914). Hence the differing shades of innocence and experience conjured in complementary (Morning and Evening) settings of ‘All the small bells they ring in the valleys’; between the two, ‘You queen moth so fine’ betrays an aching pathos.

By contrast, the six Russian Songs (BVN126, 1916) are pithy and often capricious settings from mainly Ukrainian sources that suggest those mood swings between elation and despondency to which Langgaard was no doubt prone during this period. A culminating point is reached in 1917 (coincidentally the year of Dora’s marriage to another) with Summer, a set of ‘Four Song Tone Pictures’ to the composer’s own texts, among which ‘The air is cooled by thunder and rain’ is not only the longest song but also a marvel of shifting timbral and expressive nuances that distil the portrait of one stranded at an existential impasse from which he could never escape.

This sequence calls for singing and playing of uncommon emotional acuity, which it receives from Louise McClelland Jacobsen and Kristian Riisager, at one with their conveying of this music’s increasingly ominous import. An earlier Dacapo collection featuring Anne Margrethe Dahl involves little overlap of content, while that on Danacord with Jens Krogsgaard was reviewed less than enthusiastically (A/16). With its fine sound, detailed annotations and idiomatic translations, this release forms an essential component of any Langgaard collection.