[Thor Joachim Haga]

I like Sibelius just fine, but I’ve always found Nielsen overrated. There’s something simplistic and transparent about his work, I don’t know. It’s not bad, it’s just not very sophisticated somehow. This became clear again when I watched the Danish classical music quiz show on TV, and of course they had to program in a lot of Nielsen pieces there.

But I guess if I sat down to systematically explore Nielsen’s work, I’d find some good pieces in there. I suppose that “instant likeability” in his music is what made him such a revered composer.

(…but compared to our own Edvard Grieg, he pales).