"This is a splendid fellow and musician" - with this quote Robert Schumann characterized the then 26-year-old Danish composer-colleague Niels Wilhelm Gade in a letter of January 5, 1844 to his Dutch friend Johannes Verhulst. The works on this release are testimonies of three different creative periods of Gade: an early work is the first Sonata in A Major, Op. 6 (dedicated to Clara Schumann) - the second Sonata in D minor, Op. 21, (dedicated to Robert Schumann) was composed in 1850 - the third Sonata in B-flat Major, Op. 59 (dedicated to Wilma Normann-Neruda) belongs to the circle of his late compositions. Among Gade's last works is the collection Volkstänze im nordischen Charakter, Op. 62, written in 1886 for the great violinist Joseph Joachim. © ARS-Produktion