During a conversation with Vagn Holmboe in 1986, when I was visiting
him at his home, he told me two things. First, that he had little
intention of allowing his first two Symphonies to see the light
of day - this was before BIS undertook their complete recording
of his 13 Symphonies, and we should be grateful that Vagn released
these two works for the
1st is the earliest
work of his we now know, and very interesting it is, and the
2nd,
which won him a Denmark Radio prize and gave him the money to
buy the land on which he built his home and where he lived for
the rest of his life, proves to be a big boned, very exciting
and complex piece - and second, that in 1943, during the darkest
days of World War II, after Denmark refused further co-operation
with Nazi Germany, and its Navy sank most of its ships, he felt
that the world was teetering on the brink of total disintegration
and he wrote a work into which he poured all his worries and
misgivings about the world situation. However, this work, he
said, which was never performed, would never see the light of
day.
As these things happen, once a composer is no longer with us
his papers are inspected and trawled over and all manner of things
come to light - look at the plethora of premières we’ve
had of Benjamin Britten’s works over the years since his
death - so it was only a matter of time before someone discovered
the
Sinfonia Disintegrazzione.
It’s a huge work, certainly Vagn’s largest orchestral
piece and it displays both the path he ultimately took as a composer,
and the path less well trod in the 20
th century. In
four very large movements; the first is named
Operation Weserübung -
the Nazi’s code name for the assault on Norway and Denmark
- and it is a long, tortured,
Allegro marziale, full of
disjointed march rhythms, the staccato rap of gunfire, huge climaxes
and no relaxation. It is a draining experience. The slow movement
-
In memoriam - is a funeral march for the dead and the
loss of democracy and freedom. This music is more dissonant than
the first movement and it becomes progressively more dissonant
and angular. The scherzo -
Apocalypse Now - is pure 12
note music, and it is ugly and barbaric; there’s no trio
to this scherzo just a straight through, six and a half minute,
rant. It’s brief - like a short sharp shock, or, perhaps,
a blitzkrieg, and it’s just as disturbing and unpleasant.
The finale -
Freedom - moves from dodecaphony to tonality
and the hope of victory and a free and better life. The music
ends triumphantly in an uneqivocal, bright, E major, the key
it has been working towards from the opening in B flat. Throughout
there’s an edge to this music, which is very uncomfortable,
but there is a logic to its progression and the whole piece is
held together by the continuous use of the rhythm of the famous
V for victory motif.
Following the folk inspired
3rd Symphony, Sinfonia
Rustica,
op.25 and the prayer for peace
Symphony
No.4, Sinfonia Sacra, op.29 (both 1941) this work will come
as a shock to many Holmboe fans for it is a very disturbing and,
dare I say it?, a rather unpleasant work. By the time Holmboe
came to write his incisive
5th Symphony the
following year he had worked his devils out of his system and
found his own voice.
This recording was made in a hurry by danone after a race to
get the rights to record the piece between danone, Danacord,
dacapo and several other Scandinavian labels who fought hard
to receive the requisite copyright permission. There are problems
with the recording, however, some brought about by the recording
itself.
The Copenhagen Glee Club Orchestra is a well established band
which has played under the direction of the distinguished conductor
Wilhelm Breuning-Svendsen, who was a student of the legendary
Swedish conductor Rane Thorleifsson, for some time. It’s
a noble effort but the enterprise is let down by the fact that
the recording engineer, Gunnar Bunnar, was drunk during at least
one session and the whole of the slow movement was lost when
he forgot to press the record button on his F1 player, so a further
session had to be arranged, thus involving more expense to an
already expensive undertaking - one hopes that Ørsteds
Parken, a lifelong friend of Holmboe and now EU Minister for
Overproduction, and chair of the EU Ethics Committee, who sponsored
this recording, wasn’t angry about this. Also, throughout
the scherzo the entire percussion section plays its part one
bar late due to a mistake in the orchestral parts made by the
copyist - and as the producer couldn’t read music, and
had never heard the piece before, he had no idea of the error.
However, the orchestra ends the scherzo with the loudest of flourishes
to be followed, a bar later, by a loud crash from the percussion;
it is most effective! There are a couple of other niggling errors
which are too small to mention - except the moment at the peaceful
start to the coda of the finale when you can clearly hear the
harp retuning the top four or five strings.
The recording is very good, if slightly out of focus at times,
probably Gunnar Bunnar’s fault again, and the separation
of violins to left and right is clearly heard but in the first
two movements the trumpets appear on the left channel and in
the third and fourth movements they are on the right. The notes
in the booklet, by Anton Deck, are OK but contain a couple of
small Northern annoyances.
Can I recommend this disk to you? The answer is yes for the chance
of our hearing such an important document is too good to miss,
despite the few mistakes listed above, and the few not mentioned.
Bob Briggs
Copenhagen Glee Club Orchestra/Wilhelm
Breuning-Svendsen 
