Copenhagen

Donald Macleod traces the course of Nielsen's relationship with the Danish capital, Copenhagen, as a student, jobbing violinist, triumphant composer and disheartened conductor

When the sculptor Anne-Marie Nielsen created a monument to her husband, the Danish composer Carl Nielsen, she said she had wanted to capture "the forward movement, the sense of life, the fact that nothing stands still" in his work. From his early years in the woods and fields of Fyn, to his life in Copenhagen, and years of restless travel and touring beyond, Donald Macleod traces the evolution of a composer determined to forge his own path.

When Nielsen arrived in Copenhagen as a student in 1884, the atmosphere in the city was sturdily optimistic. Donald Macleod traces the course of Nielsen's relationship with the Danish capital, Copenhagen, where he was at first thrilled by the opportunities and the new musical horizons it opened up to him. But over time, as conductor of the Royal Theatre Orchestra, and as a composer pushing against the German domination of music, he would experience a series of bitter disappointments, eventually finding the city stifling, and longing to escape.