Comparative review:
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2003/Aug03/Holmboe_Concertos8_10.htm
Though recorded between
1998 and 1999 Bis was quite slow to
release this trio of Concertos for Orchestra,
an added adornment to their remarkable
Holmboe series. It’s true that Dacapo
released a set of discs dedicated to
the concertos (all thirteen) but the
standards of musicianship, scholarship
and commitment evinced in the Bis series
has been so high that their entrant
is no less deserving of accolade and
the most admiring investigation.
Formally cohesive and
impressive, the Eighth Concerto, cast
in two movements, dates, as with the
Tenth, from the immediate post-War years.
Rhythmic impulse is constant, lyricism
is unceasing and Hughes pays powerful
attention to the dynamic rise and fall
of the music, and in particular to the
expressive diminuendi that create such
tension in the opening movement. The
second, a series of variations, fits
Holmboe’s schema perfectly – an inexorable,
seamless unfolding of themes and patterns
laced with brass outbursts of trenchant
lyricism, including pockets of ceremonial
brass, stately as a castle top, and
some smart, surging melodic writing
to end.
The Tenth is separately
tracked in nine sections and is written
with all Holmboe’s astute aplomb. Noteworthy
are the strong and sinewy writing of
the Allegro molto section and
the elegant arabesques for the winds
in the succeeding Lento. The
Adagio is string-textured and the close
of the Concerto is strong on ebullience
and joyfulness. Of the two it’s the
Eighth that makes the more immediate
impression, perhaps in part because
the slightly later work cleaves to a
more disparate and internally contrastive
viewpoint, though there’s no doubting
its immediacy of expression or the mastery
of colour and orchestration.
Den Galsindede Tyrk
(The Ill-Tempered Turk) is
a ballet suite written in the last year
of the Second World War but which, so
far, is yet to be staged. There’s some
combustible music along the way in the
Dance of the Executioner, much
elegance in the Dance of the Two
Spirits and some fine shimmering
writing, with evocative naturistic writing
in Dance of the Trees. There’s
also some folkloric writing and some
swirling, skirling strings along the
way – but nothing here is generic and
nothing sounds at all forced or piquant.
As with all Holmboe’s lighter music
it sounds inevitably right – and musically
consonant. And you’ll also perhaps pick
up hints to come that resurface in his
symphonic music – especially the Seventh
Symphony.
The Concerto Giocondo
e Severo is a much later work, written
in 1977. Strong, lucid and written with
full mastery, the felicities of his
orchestration are audible even when
the heavy brass make their impression.
Textures are kept aerated and free,
proportions are kept within natural
emotive and stylistic bounds; there
are certainly moments when one is reminded
of the Tenth in his use of contrastive
devices, in the quick conjunction; in
its quick compactness – try the felicitous
wind writing the familiar percussion
tattoos, the use of low brass and the
sense of concentrated triumph at the
end.
With characteristically
fine notes and equally warm and resonant
recording this is another welcome addition
to the Bis-Holmboe roster. Try the symphonies
first but don’t neglect this body of
work.
Jonathan Woolf
Aalborg Symphony Orchestra/Owain Arwel Hughes
