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Donald Macleod looks at the post-war period in Nielsen's life, when he found in Sweden a respect and appreciation of his music that he had never had in Copenhagen.

When the sculptor Anne-Marie Nielsen created a monument to her husband, the Danish composer Carl Nielsen, she said she had wanted to capture "the forward movement, the sense of life, the fact that nothing stands still" in his work. From his early years in the woods and fields of Fyn during the aftermath of the catastrophic 1864 war, to his studies and triumph as a composer in Copenhagen, and years of restless travel and touring beyond, Donald Macleod traces the evolution of a composer determined to forge his own path.

In the early 1920s Nielsen's patron was the industrialist CJ Michaelsen, who, as well as supporting him as he worked on a symphony, bought him a Renault motor car. The generous gift meant that the composer was soon tearing around the countryside he loved, although his skill behind the wheel left a lot to be desired. He also found backing in Sweden, where he established an exceptional rapport with the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, and he would spend most of his time away from Denmark. He was reconciled with his wife Anne-Marie in 1922, on the very day he finished the manuscript of his masterpiece, the Fifth Symphony.