An Imaginary Trip to the Faroe Islands
concert overture composed by Carl Nielsen
Carl Nielsen's rhapsody overture An Imaginary Trip to the Faroe Islands (En Fantasirejse til Færøerne) is a musical composition for orchestra. The Royal Danish Theatre in Copenhagen commissioned the piece for a gala concert celebrating a visit from the Faroe Islands. The composer conducted the premiere on 27 November 1927.
Background
In a letter to his wife dated 4 January 1927, Nielsen wrote: "Now over the next 8-10 days I have to write an overture to mark a big Faroese gala at the Royal Theatre supported by the State... I will use motifs from the Faroese ballads, and I can easily manage that, and it will give me some pleasure as it is good that we do something for them." In fact the visit was postponed until November owing to an influenza epidemic.
There were only two performances of the work during Nielsen's lifetime, both of them in connection with the Faroese celebrations. The first was at the Royal Theatre on 27 November 1927, the second at a concert in Copenhagen City Hall with the Copenhagen Philharmonic Orchestra.
Music
A couple of days before the gala performance on 27 November 1927, a long interview with Nielsen was published in Politiken where the composer had the opportunity to comment on his music.
After all, it’s just an occasional work, an example of workmanship if you like... but I have personally been happy working with it and I think it has come to sound very good.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4750040. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1927.
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This entry incorporates text from “An Imaginary Trip to the Faroe Islands” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.