Fini Henriques

(Valdemar) Fini Henriques
(b Copenhagen, 20 Dec 1867; d Frederiksberg, 27 Oct 1940). Danish composer and violinist.

After piano instruction from his mother and from Friedrich Hess he became a violin pupil of Valdemar Tofte and studied composition with Svendsen. Between 1888 and 1891 he attended the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin, studying with Joachim (violin) and Bargiel (theory). On his return he was awarded the Ancker Scholarship which enabled him to undertake a trip to Germany and Austria. During the period 1892–6 he was a member of the Kongelige Kapel, after which he pursued the career of a freelance artist, chiefly as a fêted violinist. He formed his own string quartet and in 1911 founded the chamber music association Musiksamfundet, which he chaired until 1931.

He composed in a highly melodic late Romantic style; influences, for example, of Schumann’s Album für die Jugend can be traced in Henriques’ piano work Billedbogen (‘The Picture Book’, 1899), in which a number of situations from the world of children are characterized in a concise form. In the larger-scale works, such as the music for the melodrama Vølund smed (‘Wayland the Smith’, 1896) and the ballet music Den lille havfrue (‘The Little Mermaid’, 1909), influences of Wagner and Tchaikovsky are often perceptible in music of otherwise Nordic colouring, with hints of Grieg and Svendsen.