Selected Early Recordings

John Frandsen studied at the Royal Academy of Music. He conducted the Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra from 1945 to 1946 and was principal conductor at the Royal Danish Opera from 1946 to 1980. After that he returned to the Danish Radio as a conductor and musical adviser while retaining his connection with the Royal Theatre as a guest conductor. John Frandsen was one of the outstanding Danish conductors of his time, not least as an interpreter of the Romantic repertoire but also of more recent opera and orchestral music. For three decades the principal conductor of the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, John Frandsen also brought flexible tempi, broad phrasing and rich orchestral sonorities to concert repertoire. This newly remastered compilation brings together 1950s recordings made for Columbia, Odeon and Philips, including Danish classics such as Gade's Echoes of Ossian and an inspired account of Brahms's Fourth Symphony.