Nancy Dalberg's Symphony in C-sharp minor is published in a critical edition as a part of the Edition·S DCM series.
No sources have been handed down about the creation process of Nancy Dalberg’s Symphony in C-sharp minor. It was premiered in 1918 at a composition concert, where Dalberg’s Capriccio was also premiered.
The fact that a woman in 1918 was given an independent concert with orchestral music did not go unnoticed by the daily press. In the reviews of the concert, it was not surprisingly Dalberg’s Symphony that received the most attention. The symphony received mixed reviews, but they all underlined the fact that the composer behind the work was a woman.
Kristeligt Dagblad wrote, among other things, the following:
"Mrs. Dalberg had, therefore, already set minds in motion. Her symphony however, was not the effort that confirmed women’s equality with men on this point. It was quite good work, and also sounded good, but the ideas did not necessitate the large form."
Politiken in roughly the same style:
"It is not an everyday thing for women to write music for a large orchestra, and an even greater rarity for them to take on a symphonic task. Mrs. Nancy Dalberg’s Symphony in C-sharp minor should also most likely to be considered a suite, or if you like an incomplete symphony; the three movements did not in any case form a whole, and one searched in vain for a connection. But it was not badly done at all, on the contrary skilfully executed, and details revealed both a sense of sound and a certain orchestral ingenuity. Considered as student work, it was promising, and the audience gave the female composer encouraging applause."
And the Nationaltidende, very positive:
"A lady who writes orchestral works is a great rarity, a lady who tackles a symphony, a phenomenon. Denmark can boast of something like this since last year, when Mrs. Nancy Dalberg, who has previously shown us her compositional abilities in songs and chamber music, presented herself as a symphonist. Her c-sharp minor symphony is as well-executed a piece of music as many of her male colleagues could manage. It is fundamentally surprising that a debutant masters both the large form and the large, modern orchestra apparatus with such skill and superiority."
Find more information and more works by Nancy Dalberg here.
Find more information about the concert on 21 February here.