In order to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Hans Christian Andersen's birth, Edition SAMFUNDET - also known as The Society for the Publication of Danish Music - has commissioned 10 new orchestral works based on stories and poems by Hans Christian Andersen. These works will be premiered at family concerts on or around Andersen's birthday - throughout the world. Negotiations are under way to involve leading symphony orchestras in four continents.

Many international composers have dealt with Andersen and put his words to music — some of the better known are Alexander Zemlinsky, Arthur Honegger and Igor Stravinsky. As recently as 1999 the Danish dacapo label released a CD on the international market with the Odense Symphony orchestra playing three symphonic works based on Andersen’s texts — Finn Høffding’s It’s Perfectly True (1943), Sven Erik Werner’s The Most Incredible Thing (1997) and Fuzzy’s The Woman with the Egg (1998). One of the most recent Danish compositions with a text based on Andersen is Svend Hvidtfelt Nielsen’s chamber opera The Little Mermaid (1999-2000), which was premiered by the Funen Opera, May 2000.

Thus Symphonic Fairytales follows up on a long tradition, and in order to reach out to both children and their parents we combine well-known Andersen fairytales with new music. In collaboration with the composers involved in Symphonic Fairytales, music and text has been combined in four categories of works: The integrated work - for children's choir, chamber choir, reciter, orchestra, The read tale - for reciter and orchestra, The orchestral Lied - for vocal soloist(s and chamber choir), orchestra, and finally the purely instrumental The tone poem.

Both concert planners and the recording industry are constantly on the lookout for new ways to build and sustain an audience for classical music. Edition SAMFUNDET has felt this through the constant demand for works especially suited for family concerts. This is one of the strongest driving forces behind Symphonic Fairytales. The project is co-ordinated by Edition SAMFUNDET that is responsible for the full funding of commission fees, production of scores, and a number of PR related activities.

We are proud to say that the list of composers in Symphonic Fairytales covers three generations of Danish composers and also represents the collaboration between several publishing houses. The composers are: Per Nørgård, Ib Nørholm, Niels Wilhelm Pedersen, Bent Lorentzen, Sven Erik Werner, Jesper Koch, Morten Olsen, Svend E. Nielsen, John Frandsen and Svend Hvidtfelt Nielsen.

There is little doubt that Hans Christian Andersen is one of the world's best known writers - but mainly as a writer of fairytales. However, Andersen wrote a wide selection of poems, travel accounts, plays and novels - apart from his famous stories which, in fact, weren't all for children. The first publications of stories did have the title "told for children", but as the years progressed the publications were simply called "stories". In the selection of texts that is presented by Symphonic Fairytales you will find both early fairy tales and late stories, along with poems.

Edition SAMFUNDET has a long tradition of publishing new Danish music. Since its foundation some 130 years ago the publishing house has developed into one of the leading Danish publishers, representing one of the weightiest catalogues of solo, chamber and orchestral music. Carl Nielsen, Rued Langgaard and Launy Grøndahl are among the early and world famous names in the catalogue.