Vagn Holmboe (1909-1996)

[Madiel]

Holmboe moved on so fast from the Cello Concerto that it's premiere was beaten by the premiere of the Recorder Concerto, op.122, written for the great Danish recorder virtuoso, Michala Petri, who was only a teenager at the time.

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More specifically, the concerto is for recorder, strings, celesta and vibraphone. Which is fairly crucial. The music and structure of the concerto is relatively conventional, and finds Holmboe in a fairly neoclassical mood, but the sound world is very distinctive. The recorder, celesta and vibraphone create an eerie fairytale quality to the music.

As to what I think of that sound world and the piece... well it turns out that depends a great deal on the performance. I own the BIS recording with Dan Laurin, but took the opportunity to stream Petri's version, and I think Petri is clearly superior. The 1st movement Allegro inocente showcases the difference the most, with Petri and her accompaniment far crisper and with less wobble in her tone. She takes the 2nd movement faster (again, this means considerably less wobble and a greater flow to the music). The 3rd movement has less difference, but even here, Petri has more sparkle and manages to make the passage where the soloist must sing through their instrument more effective.

I did actually like the BIS recording a little more after I'd heard Petri's version and understood what the piece could sound like. It's not bad as such, but compared side-by-side I feel the recording by Petri has no drawbacks.

[Karl Henning]

More specifically, the concerto is for recorder, strings, celesta and vibraphone. Which is fairly crucial. The music and structure of the concerto is relatively conventional, and finds Holmboe in a fairly neoclassical mood, but the sound world is very distinctive. The recorder, celesta and vibraphone create an eerie fairytale quality to the music.

Very nice scoring!

[Christo]

Very nice scoring!

The effect being a unique sound world that is most convincingly created by the Michala Petri / Okko Kamu recording, as Orfeo points out correctly. A magic recording that has been a personal favourite for long.

[Madiel]

The burst of concerto-writing activity continued about a year later, with Flute Concerto No.1, op.126 composed in 1975-6.

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Though at the beginning, you might be forgiven for thinking you've accidentally stumbled into an oboe concerto. After a two-chord orchestral beginning (which, as with the cello concerto and many other Holmboe pieces, has a tendency to recur), it's the oboe that takes the lead and it takes a while to register that the flute has taken over. The two instruments are often in dialogue in the 1st movement, which is bright and crisp, and in general Holmboe weaves the soloist through the orchestral texture.

In the 2nd movement, the magical low registers of the alto flute are very much to the fore after a 2.5 minute introduction. This time it's the clarinet that gets some pieces of dialogue with the soloist.

The 3rd movmenet starts with bold brass statements in a slow tempo, then picks up a bit of speed for the flute's entry. Both the oboe and clarinet have a go at combining their lines with the flute, before the brass return and slow the music down again. There's a tendency to long, wandering horizontal lines in the music, and it's rather different in mood from what I would expect from the finale of a concerto. About two-thirds of the way through there's finally something of a breakthrough and the pace picks up again, but there's still a darker tone than there was in the 1st movement. The flute continues to dominate after its cadenza, though the piece ends with one firm, slightly ambiguous orchestral chord.

It's an effective piece. It seems it's going to be fairly conventional until that finale, but all of it is engaging. And this, the only recording, seems fit for purpose!

[Rons_talking]

I found this today:
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These pieces are of a different sound-world of the composer's. VH uses the strings in a manner similar to Bartok in Music for Strings Percussion and Celeste with lengthy expansion of his motivic material. It is right on the border of tonality with few sections that are purely diatonic, yet amid all the chromaticism there is a kind of resolving harmonic event. In other words, it's more like Bartok, Hindemith and Malipiero rather than Sessions or Boulez.
Moving stuff...
(It his Kiaro, Sinfonias 1-4)

[Madiel]

It was raining concertos in the mid-70s: cello, recorder, flute and now the Tuba Concerto, op.127

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This one tends to leave favourable memories. The length might have something to do with it (only 16.5 minutes, a single continuous movement with a number of distinct sections), but it's mostly the sheer interest of the solo instrument. Initially the pace is steady and the tone is melancholy and a little dark. Later on, though, there's some quite rapid playing and interesting effects like singing through the instrument. There's some delicate moments, and also some full-on blaring.

It really does come across as a showcase, designed to display all the things a tuba can do.

[Christo]

It really does come across as a showcase, designed to display all the things a tuba can do.

Like

[Madiel]

All the musical things a tuba can do.

[Madiel]

1977 produced another two concertante works. First, the unrecorded Louisiana Concerto, op.131, which I've now realised thanks to a bit of googling was written for the new concert hall at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, a significant Danish establishment.

Then, the Concerto giocondo e severo, op.132.

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Cheerful and stern. It's only a touch over 10 minutes long, but that's plenty of time to go through a range of moods and lots of orchestral colours. I don't really want to try to break down the form of it other than to say that it has that sense of an ever-unfolding line so characteristic of the composer, and it lives up to its title perfectly. Brass slides are a perfect amusing touch to undercut, just a little, what is usually perceived as Holmboe's serious nature.

It's a little gem of a piece, really.

[Karl Henning]

1977 produced another two concertante works. First, the unrecorded Louisiana Concerto, op.131, which I've now realised thanks to a bit of googling was written for the new concert hall at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, a significant Danish establishment.

Then, the Concerto giocondo e severo, op.132.

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Cheerful and stern. It's only a touch over 10 minutes long, but that's plenty of time to go through a range of moods and lots of orchestral colours. I don't really want to try to break down the form of it other than to say that it has that sense of an ever-unfolding line so characteristic of the composer, and it lives up to its title perfectly. Brass slides are a perfect amusing touch to undercut, just a little, what is usually perceived as Holmboe's serious nature.

It's a little gem of a piece, really.

I'll bet!

[CRCulver]

1977 produced another two concertante works. First, the unrecorded Louisiana Concerto, op.131, which I've now realised thanks to a bit of googling was written for the new concert hall at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, a significant Danish establishment.

For fans of 20th-century Danish music, it's a famous place, because it was there on October 9, 1979 that Per Nørgård first encountered the art of Adolf Wölfi, which led to a drastic change in his own composing style. It would be interesting to see if Holmboe ever voiced his thoughts on the evolution of Nørgård's career. I know that he felt challenged by his students in the late Fifties/early Sixties and briefly dabbled in atonality before deciding it wasn't for him, but what did Holmboe think of the further course of Danish modernism in the subsequent decades, especially when it often re-embraced tradition?

[Madiel]

Still hot on the concerto trail, Holmboe completed the Violin Concerto No.2, op.139 in 1979.

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It's a two movement work, the first movement containing a slightly slower central section and the second movement fusing together an Adagio and an Allegro.

The impression I tend to get is of a fairly free rhapsody unfolding. I do hear some recurring elements in the 1st movement (the semitone pulse in the orchestra being the most obvious), but the main takeaway for me is the way the solo violin weaves itself through and over the textures. It takes the lead more obviously in the slower central section. The liner notes speak of eastern European folk music and that seems apt enough. There's a slightly dark tone to the movement, until it dies away unexpectedly (well, not entirely unexpectedly when you consider Holmboe's fondness for linking movements in this way so that the changes occur not between movements, but within them).

The opening of the 2nd movement is almost a little romantic when it begins, with the horn given a prominent role. At one point later in the Adagio it's more severe and darkened by the other brass before regaining that romantic touch. A solo passage leads into the tempo change, and like everything else in this concerto the Allegro changes as it goes - initially quite dark and firm, later light and transparent then back to firmer again and a triumphant major key ending.

My attempts at describing Holmboe's music are becoming worse, because the forms are becoming looser and freer. What really needs to be singled out, though, as it has on this forum before, is how superb the recording on this hybrid SACD is. You really couldn't wish for a better platform for the music to shine through. I'm sure a major reason I find the solo part so mesmerising is because it is recorded so beautifully.

[Madiel]

The pace of concerto writing had slowed slightly, but Holmboe still had one more in him to complete the phase.

The Flute Concerto No.2, op.147 was composed in 1981-2.

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I'll be up front and say I've been looking forward to this one because I remembered it as my favourite on this album (though as I've now noted, the alternative recording of the Recorder Concerto is better than the one here).

Certainly, nothing strikes me as problematic about the performance of the Flute Concerto. The music flows very pleasingly in the 1st movement, which has a somewhat open-air pastoral quality to it. The strings are frequently prominent and engage in a lot of dialogue with the flute. Increasingly there's a rapidly ascending figure that also appears in the brass.

The 2nd movement starts with fantastic colouring from the celesta and vibraphone, very apt to match with the lower tones of the flute and creating a bit of a fairytale atmosphere. Similar ascending figures continue to appear, especially in the solo part.

The finale starts delightfully with bassoons and pizzicato strings strumming out an almost Spanish rhythm. There's a lightness and delicacy in the music, a sense which is maintained even when it's in a minor key. It's not quite like any previous Holmboe, and I think one of my favourite movements because of that. After the cadenza the pace picks up and the music moves to a solid close.

This is definitely a piece I'd recommend: very approachable, clear outlines, a bit of a different character in each movement. All of that makes for an engaging listen in my book. Perhaps that's also my way of saying this is more conventional than some of Holmboe's other works? But if so, it still clearly bears the marks of his style.

[Brian]

I didn't realize this (probably orfeo did), but according to BIS CEO Robert von Bahr, Holmboe's last symphony was written expressly for the CD cycle.

"Another one of BIS's discoveries, the Dane Vagn Holmboe, whose Complete Symphonies (and a lot of other things) we decided to record. Unlike with Tubin we decided that we wanted to involve the composer and involved he became. He died shortly after the recording of his last symphony (which he actually wrote for this cycle), a very happy man."

Text available today only here: http://www.eclassical.com/pages/daily-deal.html?cache=purge

[Christo]

I didn't realize this (probably orfeo did), but according to BIS CEO Robert von Bahr, Holmboe's last symphony was written expressly for the CD cycle.

"Another one of BIS's discoveries, the Dane Vagn Holmboe, whose Complete Symphonies (and a lot of other things) we decided to record. Unlike with Tubin we decided that we wanted to involve the composer and involved he became. He died shortly after the recording of his last symphony (which he actually wrote for this cycle), a very happy man."

Text available today only here: http://www.eclassical.com/pages/daily-deal.html?cache=purge

I actually paid him and his wife Meta May Graf (the artist) a visit in their country house at lake Arresø in northern Sealand, the Danish island where Copenhagen is also situated. (He had built in himself and also planted a modest forest around it which they showed me - on the land property he had bought with the prixe money he had won in the late 1930s with his Second Symphony BTW.) My visit (I was planning a radio documentary about his music) took place early August, 1995, a year before his death and he had just recovered from an disease and started composing again, he told me. He showed me the score of the Thirteenth Symphony on the piano and told me he had decided to dedicate it to conductor Owain Arwel Hughes. I can't remember if the conductor had already seen the score - I don't think so, but should play the tapes of our conversation to find out - but I'm almost sure he had already scheduled its recording for the completion of the BIS cycle.

[Madiel]

You credit me with much knowledge, Brian... PS What happened to your own Holmboe listening? It seemed to peter out around Symphony No.8. There's so much more to explore!

All I can say is that the BIS symphony box set says that Owain Arwel Hughes asked Holmboe, in January 1993, to write the 13th symphony. The first recordings in the set were in 1992 so it's certainly plausible.

I think I did see somewhere the idea that the 13th was written because there would a very short CD in the set otherwise. It wouldn't have been that hard to work out ahead of time that there was room for another work.

[Madiel]

I had a bit of a Holmboe lull - over a week off!

Which has extended further the time before arriving at the Intermezzo Concertante, op.171, for tuba and string orchestra (composed in 1987).

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Still, it has been a few years in Holmboe's timeline since the last concerto, and this is only a short work of 7-8 minutes. It unfolds over that time at a fairly steady pace, though there are several different sections marking variations in theme and mood.

The tuba never quite gets the level of of prominence that it did in the Tuba Concerto. Its first entry is so subtle that you almost might miss it. The strings are a constant, darkly pulsing presence, at times sweeping over the tuba. In the central section they even have soloists of their own.

Not a major piece, but a very nicely constructed one that is up to this composer's standards.

[Karl Henning]

. . . Intermezzo Concertante, op.171, for tuba and string orchestra (composed in 1987).

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Still, it has been a few years in Holmboe's timeline since the last concerto, and this is only a short work of 7-8 minutes. It unfolds over that time at a fairly steady pace, though there are several different sections marking variations in theme and mood.

The tuba never quite gets the level of of prominence that it did in the Tuba Concerto. Its first entry is so subtle that you almost might miss it. The strings are a constant, darkly pulsing presence, at times sweeping over the tuba. In the central section they even have soloists of their own.

Not a major piece, but a very nicely constructed one that is up to this composer's standards.

I believe I have that 'un . . . must dig.

I had a bit of a Holmboe lull - over a week off! — a break can be refreshing 

[Madiel]

Yeah, it was time to see other people. 

That, and work was so crazily insane last week that I couldn't handle the more intellectually-oriented music in my collection.

[kishnevi]

I finished my first voyage through the symphonies set.  The only one I thought weak was the Fourth: Mahler without the neuroticism, Shostakovich without the angst.

This week I am going through the SQs.  The lack of track listings, or even identifying the quartets on the sleeve of each CD, is a bit annoying.  God help me if I ever lose the booklet!

Although, my workday today was a bit frazzling so I am not Holmboeing tonight.  Tomorrow....