Carl Nielsen (1865-1931)
Complete Piano Music Volume 2 Festival Prelude Suite, Op. 45
Three Piano Pieces, Op. 59
Piano Music for Young and Old, Op. 53

"It is a fact," Nielsen wrote in his young days, "that the artist who is handy with his fists will secure for himself the most lasting reputation: Beethoven... Bach, Berlioz... and similar men have all given their contemporaries a black eye!" However, in 1906 he wrote that a composer who shows a little independence is wrongly described as a revolutionary because of the continuity which cannot be killed or stifled in the spiritual-artistic life. Nielsen's progressive tendencies and his discipline to preserve musical principles are polar opposites which call for the discovery of a thread between the piano works, otherwise so diverse, on this disc.

As is well-known, Nielsen was born in the rural surroundings of Fyn in 1865, the seventh of twelve children in a mod