Do BIS and Dacapo talk to each other? With only one falter they have produced
complementary entries. It is not that they are the only record company players
in the field but they are certainly the most active so far as Holmboe is
concerned. Between them they have recorded great swathes of Holmboe. The
string quartets and the thirteen numbered concertos have been the province
of Dacapo. BIS have recorded the complete symphonies and with many of the
other orchestral works 'picked off' along the way. The four Symphonic
Metamorphoses are a natural, if tough textured, partner to the symphonies.
While few if any of the symphonies are hard going these metamorphoses require
persistence and even when as well performed and recorded as they are here
they would not be the place to begin to sift through the Holmboe lists.
In Knud Ketting's always readable notes Holmboe's own thoughts on metamorphosis
are quoted. The composer favours structure over variations. Metamorphosis
charts change from one thing to another.
Epitaph suggests flickering flames and rising insurrection
with a higher quotient of Shostakovich than is quite usual in Holmboe. This
is hair-raising music made familiar by woodwind patterns that are typical
of the composer and some scatter-gun writing for angst ridden strings Some
of the brass writing has the ceremonial flourish of Gabrieli but this is
deadly serious stuff with some of it closer to Shostakovich's Razliv and
Seventh Symphony than to Holmboe's usual stamping grounds.
Monolith is the shortest of the metamorphoses. Its big-boned
timpani suggest, at first, some violent rite but soon become much more
cosmopolitan with the now usual Shostakovich-like feel to some passages.
There are signs that Holmboe had absorbed Bartók's Concerto for
Orchestra into his bloodstream at least in relation to the overall shaping
of the themes.
Epilog is in one breath of 26 minutes duration. It followed
hot on the heels of the much shorter Monolith. It occupies the sixteen
year period between the Eighth Symphony and the Ninth Symphony. Epilog
could easily have been called a symphony and no-one would have blinked.
It has that character. While not, to these ears, Sibelian it is a dark work
and unusually, in fact uniquely for the Metamorphoses, returns to
the opening theme.
Tempo Variabile written for the Bergen orchestra is in 4 sections
and is shot through with the ruthlessness of Shostakovich in Symphonies 10
and 12 and the discontent and anguish of Allan Pettersson in the braying
ululation of the brass. In 1972 Pettersson was beginning to make an impact
on the world music scene. It would be interesting to know what Holmboe thought
of Pettersson's more intuitive, almost rhapsodic symphonies. Bartók
and central European streams run through these pages in confluence with
Nielsen-like ideas; the latter especially in the woodwind and French horns.
Rob Barnett
Aalborg SO/Owain
Arwel Hughes
