Sir Mark Elder conducts Nielsen 4 - Academy Symphony Orchestra

The Academy’s Barbirolli’s Chair of Conducting, Sir Mark Elder, conducts the Academy Symphony Orchestra in a moving rendition of Carl Nielsen’s Symphony No 4, ‘The Inextinguishable.’ This live recording is taken from the sell-out performance in the Duke’s Hall in June 2016; in the same month, Elder was announced as our Barbirolli Chair.

This is one of Nielsen’s most powerful symphonies, and much can be gleaned from the explanatory note at the beginning of the score. ‘Under this title’, he tells us, ‘the composer has tried to indicate in one word what the music alone is capable of expressing to the full: The elemental Will of Life. Music is life, and like it, inextinguishable’.