HOLMBOE: Primavera for Flute, Violin, Cello & Piano. “Gioco,” String Trio. Sonata for Solo Flute. Ballata, Op. 159 for Piano Quartet. Quartetto for Flute, Violin, Viola & Cello / Ensemble MidtVest: Charlotte Norholt, fl; Ana Feitosa, vln (Trio & Ballata); Matthew Jones, vln (Qrt); Sahna Ripatti, vla; Jonathan Slaatto, vc; Martin Qvist Hansen, pno / Dacapo 8.226073
HOLMBOE: Eco, Trio for Clarinet, Cello & Piano. Aspects for Wind Quintet. Sonata for Solo Cello. Quartetto Medico for Flute, Oboe, Clarinet & Piano. Sextet for Flute, Clarinet, Bassoon, Violin, Viola & Cello / Ensemble MidtVest: as above, but Feitosa out; add Peter Kirstein, oboe; Tommaso Lonquich, cl; Neil Page, Fr-hn; Stefan Kasper, bsn / Dacapo 8.226074
We now move on to chamber music by Holmboe other than his string quartets, and what I found particularly interesting about these was a lightness of touch. Even in their slow movements, the string quartets were almost always intense, but here, writing for smaller groups, sometimes involving wind instruments, I discovered a different “voice” in his approach.
The music here is played by Ensemble MidtVest, a chamber group formed in 2002 which consists of a string quartet, a wind quintet, and a pianist. Beginning in 2009, they were the ensemble in residence at HEART, the Herning Museum of Contemporary Art, which plays in its own concert hall designed by American architect Stephen Holl.
Holmboe’s lighter touch is immediately apparent in the Primavera for Flute, Violin, Cello & Piano, in which he makes a concerted effort to create melodic lines that are not always obscure but, rather, lyrical, though he does not abandon his incredibly versatile use of shifting harmonies and dynamics. And, amazingly, he even manages at times, as in the first movement, to create dramatic tension even while interspersing these moments with his lighter music. To be honest—and this is one reason I’m exploring Holmboe in so much depth—I can’t think of even one composer today, not even Kalevi Aho who I personally consider to be the greatest of all living composers, who is able to do so much with almost minimal themes and musical gestures as Holmboe did, and it’s almost criminal to think of how his music is shot out of the standard repertoire of orchestras and chamber groups.
Listen, for instance, to the second movement of this piece, where he manages to “separate” the various instruments and create a multi-voiced canon for them to play. It all sounds so simple, and particularly in this movement it is easy on the ear, yet there is so much subtlety in his writing and so much ingenuity going on beneath the surface that you can’t stop listening. The music here does not demand your attention as in his String Quartets, his Requiem for Nietzsche or his Symphonic Metamorphoses, but it beckons you and holds it by means of his incredible genius. Even more so than Stravinsky, Holmboe managed to make his music both complex and, for the most part, appealing to listeners. This second movement, taken by itself could almost pass muster to be played on conventional FM classical music stations; and, surprisingly, the third movement is not a scherzo but and adagio which later, suddenly, morphs into vivace; and here, too, the slow opening section is accessible if a bit spooky, much like Beethoven’s famous “Ghost Trio.” But then, a third of the way in, Holmboe explodes into one of the happiest pieces of music he ever wrote as the quartet bursts into the vivace section. His music just had a perfect balance between form and inspiration, always creating an emotional mood. He never produced works that were indeed intellectually interesting but lacked an emotional appeal.
Gioco, though also light in touch, is not quite as jocular as its title suggests…or perhaps I should say, not more jocular than Primavera. In fact, the slow second movement sounds to me much more serious in tone than Primavera, and I must slightly criticize Ensemble MidtVest’s strings for playing this music with straight tone. Just because your Professors in the Universities have convinced you that this is the way to play 18th through early 20th-century music—which is historically incorrect, make no mistake about that—does not give you liberty to do the same to composers who worked within the long period in which string players used constant vibrato. In fact, I would think that the music would gain in emotional appeal if you used more vibrato, as cellist Jonathan Slaatto does at the very beginning of the third-movement “Adagio.” Nonetheless, their light touch compensates to some degree for this historical inaccuracy.
The sonata for solo flute is appropriately light and airy. Here, Holmboe only pushes the harmonic envelope so far; he doesn’t force the issue with edgy, raspy sounds played on the edge of the blowhole by the flautist, as far too many composers do nowadays, yet the music remains appealing and, as usual, interesting. Even the second-movement fugue has a bounce, and insouciance, about it that pulls the listener in despite its ambiguous harmony. More importantly, all this music shows you that Holmboe had a sense of humor and could approach his audiences with a wink and a smile when he wanted to…something you’d never guess from the Requiem, the Metamorphoses or even most of the string quartet movements.
In the piano quartet Ballata, we unfortunately hear Ensemble MidtVest return to their grating straight tone, but after the somewhat painful sound of the introduction, the first movement is generally attractive to the ear thanks to their fleet, light playing. (I wonder if it ever dawns on these players how incongruous straight-tone strings sound next to a piano, which always has vibrato unless one constantly holds the damper pedal down?) But beggars can’t be choosers, and at least we have here the chance to listen to this marvelous music, even if somewhat distorted. After a light but quixotic first movement, Holmboe turned the second movement, “Allegretto- Quieto-Vivace” into something of a disquiet by means of his almost Stravinskian harmonies, one of the few times I can recall him coming that close to the Russian master. In this movement, I did detect the lead violin using a light, fast vibrato, so at least we get that much.
Perhaps most interesting of all the pieces on this first CD (although the others are certainly interesting in themselves) is the Quartetto for flute and string trio. Although also light and airy, due to the nature of the flute, the music is a bit thornier in its harmonic base and not as consistently “pretty” as the other works on this CD. This puts this piece in a space somewhere between Gioco and the string quartets. There are melodic lines, but in the first movement they are less lyrical and more ambiguous than in some of the other works; the second (slow) movement is rather somber in mood, not so much depressing as simply very serious; Holmboe has reined in his humorous side to a surprising degree. There is also a four-part canon in this movement, subtle but still impressive. Holboe is quoted in the liner notes as saying, “I can’t abide tricks. I think the moment you use various tricks—just for the sake of the trickery, that is—then it’s a lie. Then you’re lying in the music.” The third movement here is clearly more jocular than the first two, set in a bright 4/4 with the occasional feeling of 6/8, but his more “rootless” harmony again gives it a quixotic feeling.
The second CD opens with Eco, a trio for clarinet, cello and piano. This is a very serious work dating from 1991; despite the bright sound of the clarinet, Holmboe focused on the combination of cello and piano, using much more serious but not heavy-handed themes to make his points. The variants are also more serious in tone, characterized by the use of minor keys. In the second movement, “Andante con moto,” Holmboe was apparently serious about the “con moto” marking as this music has more forward momentum than the first movement. Having the three instruments generally play entirely different lines of music, only coming together occasionally for short passages, is another thing that gives it a more serious feeling. At one point, he uses the cello in pizzicato passages that simulate in feeling (if not in rhythm) the “walking” bass of a jazz trio. (I noticed this once or twice in the string quartets as well; I think it was the one feature of jazz performance that appealed to him.) This is followed by yet another “Andante” movement, this time almost querulous in its progression, with a surprising double-time passage in which the three instruments play contrapuntally against each other for quite some time. Indeed, shifting and changing the pace of the music here accentuates rather than reduces its feeling of strangeness. (And yes, I did note that in this piece cellist Slaatto uses a light vibrato. Good for him!)
Aspekter (Aspects) is written entirely for wind quintet, bringing the oboe, bassoon and French horn into the mix along with the flute. Though also somewhat serious, it has a lighter feel to it than Eco. Halfway through the first movement, in fact, the tempo picks up and it actually does become rather lighthearted, the underlying harmonies being much less dense. Yet it is the third movement, “Andante inquieto,” that is the happiest and airiest of all—followed by a short but very serious “Lento.” But that isn’t the last movement! Holmboe suddenly does an about-face and gives us an extremely jocular final “Allegro giocoso” with an emphasis on the second word.
I fully expected the solo cello sonata to be a very serious work, and I was not disappointed, but his model here was clearly not J.S. Bach’s Cello Suites; there seemed to me something of Bartók or Kodály in this work although the musical progression is typical of Holmboe and no one else. Here he flirts with both bitonal and atonal figures, yet always seems to be able to switch back to a tonal center any time he feels like it. The first movement, with its rhythmically complex and, for the most part, fast figures avoids a feeling of cheap virtuosity by virtue of his serious approach to the composition, even in the rapid second-movement where his bouncy syncopations are used to create a fugue. The third and last movement alternates bowed and pizzicato figures, but in a serious rather than in a light mood.
The Quartetto Medico for winds and piano was written for medical students who were all amateur musicians. His challenge, then, was to create an interesting piece that did not degrade his reputation, yet make it simple enough for them to play. He also used tongue-in-cheek movement titles combining musical terminology with medical word endings, i.e. two short movements named “Intermedico” and another titled “senza pianisticitis”! And again, he was able to conflate his serious and lighter sides in the music, which despite its technical simplicity is wonderfully structured and, as usual, communicative. He was clearly an extremely gifted composer.
We return, however, to the more complex Holmboe in his Sextet for three each of winds and strings. This, too, juxtaposes lightness and seriousness in the way we have by now come to expect from him, using long-lined melodies and equally long-lined variations. There are also, here, examples of his subtle humor in some of the passages. It makes a great closer to these two wonderful discs.
—© 2024 Lynn René Bayley
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