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| Composers Biography - Languages - |  |
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Niels Wilhelm Gade
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The Danish composer, organist and violinist, Niels Gade, began his musical career with the Danish Royal Orchestra. His first success as a composer came in 1840 with his overture Echoes of Ossian. His first symphony was performed by the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig, where he met Mendelssohn and Schumann who greatly influenced his work. Gade succeeded the former as conductor of the Gewandhaus Orchestra in 1847. In 1848 he returned to Copenhagen where he assumed a leading position in the musical life of the country. He was appointed kapellmeister to the court there in 1876 and was eventually made Commander of the Order of Daneborg. 
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Gade's orchestral music includes eight symphonies, a Violin Concerto and several concert overtures, with an evocative "A Summer's Day in the Country", five pieces for orchestra. Gade's chamber music includes one mature String Quartet and two String Quintets, a String Sextet and String Octet, Fantasiestücke for clarinet and piano and three Violin Sonatas. His piano music, items of which once formed a general part of popular amateur repertoire, includes a Piano Sonata, Fantasy Pieces and Akvareller (Water-Colours), attractive brief sketches. The cantatas Zion and Psyche were written for the Birmingham Festival, testimony to the international reputation of Gade, whereas the earlier Comala reflects his interest in Ossian and Elverskud (Elf-King's Daughter) is Scandinavian in choice of subject and treatment. In his later music Gade's nationalism was subsumed in the German musical idiom that he had experienced in Leipzig.
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