# SS 04.09.21 - Holmboe #8



## Mika (Jul 24, 2009)

A continuation of the Saturday Symphonies Tradition:

Welcome to another weekend of symphonic listening!

For your listening pleasure this weekend:

Vagn Holmboe (1909 - 1996)

Symphony No.8, Op.56 (1951) Sinfonia boreale

I. Allegro molto intensivo
II. Tempo giusto	
III. Andante con moto	
IV. Allegro passionato

---------------------

Post what recording you are going to listen to giving details of Orchestra / Conductor / Chorus / Soloists etc - Enjoy!


----------



## Mika (Jul 24, 2009)

This weekend we will listen Holmboe #8. We have done #5 before. Vagn composed 13 symphonies, so we have plenty of them left. I will listen version of American Symphony orchestra (spotify link below). There is also recording of complete symphonies by Aarhus Symphony Orchestra (youtube link).


----------



## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

Holmboe: Symphonies Nos. 8 & 9

Aarhus Symphony Orchestra, Owain Arwel Hughes

I had to dig deep but I will go with this one later .


----------



## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Hughes on BIS for me as well - from CD.


----------



## Malx (Jun 18, 2017)

I'll get to this one later today or tomorrow morning as time allows - BIS recording for me as well from hard disc.


----------



## Merl (Jul 28, 2016)

Malx said:


> I'll get to this one later today or tomorrow morning as time allows - BIS recording for me as well from hard disc.


^ What he said.


----------



## Haydn man (Jan 25, 2014)

And I will be going with the same version


----------



## CnC Bartok (Jun 5, 2017)

Owain Arwel Hughes here too!

But shhhhh! Don't tell josquin13 about this. It's really one of his favourite pieces! Actually, his advocacy of Holmboe has been very infectious over the past few years, reassuring that I do not have weird tastes.......

Holmboe is a very fine composer, debatably the finest Denmark has produced since Nielsen. My preference among his Symphonies is the immensely powerful 6th, but this one runs it close. In recent years I have been spending more time on his other significant contributions - the Chamber Concertos, the Quartets, and the weird and wacky Requiem for Nietzsche etc. But there's no doubt about the quality and importance of his Symphonies.

Great choice!


----------



## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

I listened to the Holmboe symphonies quite a lot some twenty years ago, trying to crack them. But I failed and could not go beyond finding them rather empty. I'll revisit the 8th in the BIS recording today. Perhaps I will like it this time.


----------



## cougarjuno (Jul 1, 2012)

I'll go with Botstein and the American Symphony Orchestra via You Tube. I agree with CnC Bartok that Holmboe is perhaps the finest Danish composer since Nielsen. His entire ouevre is well-worth exploring. A composer with a strong sense of purpose.


----------



## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

No, I still don't greatly care for it. I found I could start listening to it anywhere in its length and be enormously impressed. But after a minute or two I would be feeling that it went nowhere very interesting. I'm obviously not getting it but I have tried enough. The slow movement worked best for me but then it sounded derivative. I suppose Holmboe's music to be rather like his wife's paintings (like the one on the covers of his BIS symphony recordings) - attractive enough but not really "world class".


----------



## MusicSybarite (Aug 17, 2017)

Stupendous selection! I can't get enough of this powerful work, one of his greatest symphonies along with 5, 6 and 10. I think the recording with Botstein doesn't do justice to the work. Both BIS recording and the one with Jerzy Semkow and Royal Danish Orchestra are in a different league.


----------



## D Smith (Sep 13, 2014)

I listened to the BIS recording and really enjoyed it. Thanks for the selection Mika.


----------



## Malx (Jun 18, 2017)

This morning I got around to listening to:










I am a fan of Holmboe's work but I can kinda see where Enthusiast is coming from - I'll admit, as I have before, my knowledge of the technicalities of musical structure etc is deficient but even I can at times perceive a lack of development of themes within Holmboe's work.
However the up side to this deficiency is I tend to listen to music largely as a collection of related 'sounds' and if the over musical sound created appeals then I am happy listener.

I like the sound of this piece and when listening to it I don't feel my concentration waning. A thumbs up from me.


----------



## Kiki (Aug 15, 2018)

Listened to the Owain Arwel Hughes with the Aarhus Symphony Orchestra on Spotify. I like 99% of what I've heard. The bangs are exciting and mostly inventive. Really like his timpani writing. The soft passages are OK but there are a few of those monotonous murmuring passages that I'm afraid always turn my stomach. Thank heaven they don't last long. Overall, I do find this symphony interesting.


----------



## Prodromides (Mar 18, 2012)

Enthusiast said:


> No, I still don't greatly care for it. I found I could start listening to it anywhere in its length and be enormously impressed. But after a minute or two I would be feeling that it went nowhere very interesting. I'm obviously not getting it but I have tried enough.


If we didn't know you are referring to Holmboe's metamorphosis approach, I might rather think this above assessment is issued forth by a person attempting to digest Morton Feldman's notated indeterminacy.


----------



## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

^ I don't really understand what you are saying. It is strange, though, because the Holmboe works from this series that I do quite like are his symphonic metamorphosis.


----------



## Josquin13 (Nov 7, 2017)

I wrote the following yesterday, but am just now getting around to posting it (so I will be repeating some of what others have already said since then):

Cncb writes, "But shhhhh! Don't tell josquin13 about this. It's really one of his favourite pieces! Actually, his advocacy of Holmboe has been very infectious over the past few years, reassuring that I do not have weird tastes......."

Yes, it is! I saw this week's choice & came running...

To my knowledge, surprisingly, there have been only three recordings of Holmboe's 1951 Symphony No. 8, entitled "Sinfonia boreale": by conductors Jerzy Semkow, Owain Arwell Hughes, & Leon Botstein--& in that order, in regards to their recording dates. My least favorite is Botstein's. I particularly like the Wagner influenced, Valkyries-like 2nd movement, which I find thrillingly imaginative. Hughes is the best of the three in this movement, in my view:






But I also like conductor Jerzy Semkow's 1969 Vox Turnabout LP recording (where the 8th was coupled with Holmboe's student, Per Norgard's "Constellations"): which used to be on You Tube, but isn't there anymore. It's worth a listen, if you can find it.

Here is Rob Barnet writing on Holmboe's 8th, and I think it's an apt description of the symphony:

"Symphony No. 8

This work opens a door on a rushing and scampering unstoppable energy complete with a tempo giusto Nordic Ride of the Valkyries. Elementals wheel in the firmament and trumpets howl (2.40 Track 2). There is also contented peace conjured by glistening strings but this soon gives way to convulsive forces ruckling the earth in a shuddering iron grip. In the third movement the cor anglais mourns. This is not superficial or shallow. There is the hint of disturbing a pool and setting loose disruptive heavy sleeping hood-eyed forces. In the finale the howl of the second movement returns pregnant with disaster as in the up-rearing wail of the Apocalyptic Horsemen in Franz Schmidt's Book of the Seven Seals. After a momentary blue-eyed peace a great storm of drum salvos and a tornado run past us newsreels of devastation, blasted heaths, flame-throwers and scorched earth. The conclusion stamps out in cleanly sculpted riven chordal hammer-blows sustained over great waves of strings sound."

http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2000/mar00/holmboe.htm

Barnet finishes his review of the Hughes BIS cycle with,

"I am probably already preaching to the converted but I want to get the message over that these Holmboe symphonies, written in the last 65 years, are treasurable works. They are there to be discovered. Their roots are struck deep in the Nordic romantic soil. Tonal and dramatic, they have a great sense of concentration and humanity. They sing gloriously! Hear them!"

For me, this is one of the better symphonies of the second half of the 20th century, and I'd place Holmboe, with his 13 symphonies & chamber concertos & sinfonias, alongside Joonas Kokkonen, Einar Englund, Allan Pettersson, & Einojuhani Rautavaara, and to a slightly lesser extent, Paavo Heininen, Per Nørgård, & Ib Nørholm, as being among my favorite Scandinavian symphonic composers of the mid to late 20th century (it's an area of music that especially interests me).

Enthusiast writes, "I suppose Holmboe's music to be rather like his wife's paintings (like the one on the covers of his BIS symphony recordings)"

Holmboe's wife, Meta (Graf)Holmboe, was a photographer, & a pianist, primarily, although she may have painted, as well (I'm not sure, but I think she did paint, in private). However, the pictures on the BIS album covers are her photographs. One could easily mistake them for paintings, due to their abstract subject matter. But they are objects or scenes that she saw in nature. (For me, the most interesting abstraction begins with nature.) I like her photographs. But if they were paintings, I'd be even more impressed, since more skill & technique would be involved.

If anyone's interested in exploring the music of Holmboe further, that is, beyond the excellent Hughes' cycle of his 13 Symphonies, I'd recommend listening to the following recordings, which are all on You Tube:

--The recent box set of Holmboe's Chamber Concertos & Sinfonias, performed by the Danish National Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Hannu Koivula: the entire set is on You Tube: 




--Four Symphonic Metamorphoses (Epitaph, Monolith, Epilog, & Tempo variable or Changeable weather): 




--Various concertos for piano, clarinet, & oboe, plus his "Beatus Parvo": 




--Brass Concertos: 




--Viola Concerto and Violin Concerto No. 2: 




--An excellent two volume survey of Holmboe chamber works by Ensemble MidtVest:

Vol. 1 (which includes "Primavera", Op. 55, a piece that I especially like): 




Vol. 2: 




--Violin Sonatas 1-3: 




--String Quartets 1-21: 




--Solo piano works, a selection played by pianist Anker Blyme (this is music that has grown on me, over time):


----------



## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

A fine post, Josquin13. BTW, there's an earlier LP with Blyme playing Holmboe's mighty _Suono da Bardo_ suite for piano. it has poorer sound, but it's even more intense than Blyme's Danacord CD version, if you stumble across it somewhere.


----------



## Josquin13 (Nov 7, 2017)

joen_cph,

I didn't know about the earlier LP recording, thanks! I see that it was released by the FONA label, in the 1970s (?), and copies are available on Discogs: https://www.discogs.com/Vagn-Holmbo...Sonate-For-Fløjte-solo-Op-71/release/13543936. Suono da Bardo, or "The Sound of the Bard" is an interesting, important work that seems to encompass a journey from darkness to light. I think it helps that Holmboe was a pianist himself. Evidently, he wrote many of his solo piano works for his wife, and a lot of it remains in manuscript form, unrecorded.


----------



## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

Yes, that's the one. I'm unaware of such a bulk of unrecorded piano works, but the Danacord CD's only really substantial work IMHO is the _Suono ..._ suite. I know there's a huge number of early, unnumbered string quartets by Holmboe, but not if the manuscripts still exist. Some of his early works can be quite catchy, such as the great _Symphony no.1_ for chamber orchestra.


----------



## Josquin13 (Nov 7, 2017)

I wish I knew more about Holmboe. A late friend of mine studied with him in Denmark, but it was well before the Hughes cycle came out, & very little was recorded, so I didn't know Holmboe's music at all. I only came to it much, much later. Hence, I never once asked my friend about Holmboe! Although he would occasionally briefly mention him, but for the life of me, I can't recall the context of any of those conversations. (Maybe I should go into hypnosis.) Needless to say, it's one of my regrets.

However, several years ago I did buy a hand signed, typed letter by Holmboe on ebay, where he mentions his "Sinfonia borealis". Apparently, the person I bought it from was cleaning house & couldn't find a buyer, since I purchased the letter for under $15. (& I never miss a chance to brag about it!)


----------

