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Customer Reviews
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Format:Audio CD|Amazon Verified Purchase
The hugely prolific Vagn Holmboe (1909-96) was the successor to Carl Nielsen as the greatest Danish symphonist of the 20th Century. In terms of sheer power and intensity the only mainstream composer who bares comparison is Shostakovich, but that is a Shostakovich without the laughs or the icy desolation. This is not a stylistic comparison, but one of ethos and impact. Holmboe took the tradition he inherited and found his own definitive voice very early in his career, hitting upon the characteristic recipe of his middle maturity at Symphony No.2, of one fifth ethereal beauty, one fifth tragic nobility and three fifths apocalyptic fury. My encounter with this incredible cycle has obliged me to reassess some of my musical conceptions in that I am used to thinking of music filled with such unmitigated violence as a response to the political and historical realities in which the artist operated. This mode of comprehension started for me with my long and ever deepening connection to Shostakovich, who gave us plenty of clear indications, starting with the very titles of the works themselves, that the grim conditions of life under totalitarianism were what his music was `about'. The still under-appreciated great British symphonist Robert Simpson provides a similar case. His music too is filled with an astonishing and more or less relentless violence that is both exhilarating and terrifying. Simpson would have resisted assertions that his music was directly or consciously `about' his experiences of World War II, or the pervasive menace of the Cold War which followed. Nonetheless, he saw his own music as the natural expression of a human individuality driven to pessimism with respect to human nature and future history. But in Holmboe we encounter a contradiction. His music, if anything is even more violent, and his personal style was formed in the years of Nazi occupation which claimed the life of his brother. So, it is a simple step to presume that the violence in his work can be understood in similar terms as an expression of outrage and anxiety. And yet, as a neo-classicist, for Holmboe music was simply music, and he entirely refuted the notion that there was any meaningful correspondence between the emotional worlds of the composer and the listener. Furthermore, reading what I can about the man, including his marvellous little book Experiencing Music: A Composer's Notes (Musicians on Music), I am left with the impression of a magnificent and supremely well adjusted human being. A man whose life was infused with a Whitmanesque spirituality, and who seemed to combine an almost childlike wonder for all things with a razor-sharp intelligence. So what am I to make of all this incredible violence whose resonances with other composers gives rise in me to a too simplistic comprehension in terms of the socio-historical categories to which they have accustomed me? It seems that I must re-educate myself. I must accept that this mighty, overwhelming, thunderous and utterly awesome music is not `about' the darkness in men's hearts, but is an expression of cosmic power as part of nature, from the heart and mind of a man who was himself a wholly undivided part of nature. What will this mean in terms of my understanding of those other composers in the long term I cannot say.
The six discs in this package are available as individual releases, but I cannot emphasise enough how much these symphonies work as a meta-musical whole, which describes not just one man's musical journey, but the lifetime journey of an outstanding human spirit. I am entirely grateful at having taken the risk of diving right in rather than dipping my toe with Vagn Holmboe: Symphonies Nos. 6 & 7, from which, for some reason No.7 is oft-cited as the definitive Holmboe symphony. I can only say now with hindsight, that to have heard just those parts in isolation from their mighty whole would be utterly unthinkable.
For what it's worth I include a synopsis of my own impressions of the cycle. At the start of his career Holmboe was absorbed with folk musical traditions from across Europe, and his travels took him to Romania where he met Kodaly and his future wife. His Symphony No.1 (1935) is a charming but unremarkable expression of these folk interests. With Symphony No.2 however (1938-39) he finds the completely distinctive voice of his middle maturity. It is an essentially tonal voice, but underscored with bold dissonances and chromaticism. His orchestration is brilliant, and his rhythmic and motivic invention tireless. As though appalled at the violence he unleashed in No.2 he retreats somewhat back into the folk idioms for No.3 (1941), as though attempting a synthesis. But thereafter he surrenders completely to his atavistic impulses, and from No.4 (1941-45) through to No.8 (1951) we have Holmboe in all his blazing mainstream glory, with one epic and catastrophic canvas after another. There was then a 15 year symphonic hiatus in which Holmboe was engaged with other forms. When No.9 (1967) eventually emerged Holmboe had calmed down significantly and we find ourselves into a third period. The ethereal beauty aspect of the recipe is extended, while the apocalyptic fury is stripped back, without being entirely forsaken, to a simmering fire that is only rarely unleashed. With each new symphony now, up until his final No.13, we feel him working towards a wise and balanced old age, with increasing economy of means, simplicity of form and a Haydn-esque brevity of utterance. At first I found these later works to be something of a disappointment after the roller-coaster thrills of the middle period. Eventually however I approached them at a time when my own mood was suitably placid and tranquil, whereupon I found these later works to be just as rich and rewarding, in their own terms, as the earlier ones.
The recordings of these spectacular performances by Arwel Hughes and the Aarhus Symphony, whose connections with Holmboe go back many years, are entirely exemplary.
The six discs in this package are available as individual releases, but I cannot emphasise enough how much these symphonies work as a meta-musical whole, which describes not just one man's musical journey, but the lifetime journey of an outstanding human spirit. I am entirely grateful at having taken the risk of diving right in rather than dipping my toe with Vagn Holmboe: Symphonies Nos. 6 & 7, from which, for some reason No.7 is oft-cited as the definitive Holmboe symphony. I can only say now with hindsight, that to have heard just those parts in isolation from their mighty whole would be utterly unthinkable.
For what it's worth I include a synopsis of my own impressions of the cycle. At the start of his career Holmboe was absorbed with folk musical traditions from across Europe, and his travels took him to Romania where he met Kodaly and his future wife. His Symphony No.1 (1935) is a charming but unremarkable expression of these folk interests. With Symphony No.2 however (1938-39) he finds the completely distinctive voice of his middle maturity. It is an essentially tonal voice, but underscored with bold dissonances and chromaticism. His orchestration is brilliant, and his rhythmic and motivic invention tireless. As though appalled at the violence he unleashed in No.2 he retreats somewhat back into the folk idioms for No.3 (1941), as though attempting a synthesis. But thereafter he surrenders completely to his atavistic impulses, and from No.4 (1941-45) through to No.8 (1951) we have Holmboe in all his blazing mainstream glory, with one epic and catastrophic canvas after another. There was then a 15 year symphonic hiatus in which Holmboe was engaged with other forms. When No.9 (1967) eventually emerged Holmboe had calmed down significantly and we find ourselves into a third period. The ethereal beauty aspect of the recipe is extended, while the apocalyptic fury is stripped back, without being entirely forsaken, to a simmering fire that is only rarely unleashed. With each new symphony now, up until his final No.13, we feel him working towards a wise and balanced old age, with increasing economy of means, simplicity of form and a Haydn-esque brevity of utterance. At first I found these later works to be something of a disappointment after the roller-coaster thrills of the middle period. Eventually however I approached them at a time when my own mood was suitably placid and tranquil, whereupon I found these later works to be just as rich and rewarding, in their own terms, as the earlier ones.
The recordings of these spectacular performances by Arwel Hughes and the Aarhus Symphony, whose connections with Holmboe go back many years, are entirely exemplary.
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