Addendum to “Short stopover at Roskilde, Denmark”
Did you listen to or watch the annual New Year’s Day Concert from Vienna? If so, you might have noticed a piece from the Danish composer, Hans Christian Lumbye. Called Copenhagen Steam Railway Galop (Kjobenhavns Jernbane-Dampgalop, in Danish), it celebrates the opening of the railway link from Copenhagen to Roskilde in 1847. The two cities — the current and previous capitals of Denmark – are only 25 miles apart and this was the first passenger line in the country.
If you missed the concert, you can listen on YouTube to an ebullient performance by the Danish National Symphony Orchestra under the flag and whistle of Gennady Rozhdestvensky. A real foot(plate)-tapper.
I’d not heard of Lumbye (“Lomboo”) before. Apparently he was a great admirer of the Strauss family’s music and was known in Denmark as “The Strauss of the North”.
Lumbye was the first music director of the Tivoli Gardens orchestra in Copenhagen and stayed in post for nearly 30 years. During that time, he wrote something like 700 pieces of dance music! Here’s one of them, the Champagne Gallop, in a riotous rendition that surely owes as much to Spike Jones as to any of the Strauss family. (Sorry about the noises off in the Danish video.)
There’s more about Lumbye here, in English, at the Web site of the Royal Danish Library.
Happy listening, and a happy New Year.