Customer Reviews

Vagn Holmboe: Four Symphonic Metamorphoses

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Holmboe's "Symphonic Metamorphoses" are works of symphonic length and proportions, but are structured differently than his actual symponies. In these works, Holmboe's ideas on musical metamorphoses are laid out with a purity and transparency not seen in the symphonies (though they also use metamorphosis but to a lesser degree).
Metamorphosis to Holmboe was very different from variation form, where the aim is to compare and contrast a theme. With metamorphosis, there is a clear musical goal. Just as a caterpillar goes through several stages before becoming a butterfly, so Holmboe's works here go through several stages to reach their musical goals. It lends a sense of direction and drama to the music that is very moving and involving.
The first work, Epitaph, is in a three movement fast-slow-fast format, and is full of powerful melodies and a lot of turbulent drama. Even the slow middle movement still has plenty of tension. Probably my favorite work on the CD.
The second work, Monolith, is shorter (< 10 minutes) and written for smaller forces. However, the vast array of percussion makes the work sound even bigger than Epitaph. Conductor Hughes has no qualms about letting the percussion cut loose! It works well in this loud and powerful piece.
The third work, Epilog, is big and dark. Written for what sounds like quite a large orchestra, the cellos and basses are given a lot of material to work with. At 26 minutes, it is the longest work on the disc and Holmboe actually initially meant this to be his 9th symphony.
The fourth work, Tempo variable, is separated by 10 years from Epilog, whereas a mere 8 years separated the first three works. It does sound somewhat different from the other works. There is more balance to this work in terms of fast/slow and dark/bright, less of the sturm und drang of the earlier pieces, and it looks forward to his later works.
The Aalborg SO play very well. They are not a 1st rate European orchestra like the Concertgebouw or the VPO, but I wouldn't describe them as 2nd rate, maybe 1 & 1/2 rate! In particular they have a great string sound, even if occasionally underpowered compared to the brass and percussion. Owain Arwel Hughes conducts strongly. Indeed I think this is his best work in the Holmboe series on BIS.
Highest recommendations.

Vagn Holmboe (1909-1998) led the post-Nielsen generation of Danish composers. A native of rural Jutland, he wrote prolifically - thirteen symphonies, twenty string-quartets, a roughly equal number of concertos, and a good deal of orchestral music in forms hardly less ambitious than the symphonic. Among the latter figure the four works that Holmboe referred to as "metamorphoses." Humphrey Searle and Robert Layton, surveying contemporary Scandinavian music in 1967, wrote of Holmboe's music that it generates "the overwhelming feeling that the musical processes that take place are the inevitable steps in the working out of a drama. In a way, the experience is not unlike a journey; the sense of forward movement is inexorable, the feeling of purpose firm, yet the wealth of detail en route renders it unpredictable... The music grows consistently from [its] initial germ-material." The four "metamorphoses" in order of compostion are: "Epitaph" (1956), "Monolith" (1960), "Epilogue" (1961-62), and "Tempo Variabile" (1971).* As the titles indicate, these four works partake of the programmatic, at least in stemming from specific ideas or events, and so differ from the symphonies as such. While it is true, as Searle and Layton say, that Holmboe "does not deal in big gestures," yet he does deal in Titanic processes - or forces - that seem to occur in a subterranean world, among the lightless roots and stones, only shooting into the inhabited earth at the last moment. Holmboe frequently disturbs the listener this way, as he does in "Monolith," the shortest of these works. The first bars are all rhythm in the drums, followed (very rapidly) by figures heard in strings and then in horns. Holmboe begins the development immediately, with stirrings and transformations and recombinations of the components, always in dark motion, until the vision of some antique monument seems to stand before us. The other three works effect the same inevitability, but on a larger scale. It is remarkable how much the composer packs into eight brief minutes. This disc forms a good introduction to the symphonic thinking of a first-rate twentieth century musical creator. [*"Sinfonia in Memoriam" (1954) is also subtitled "symphonic metamorphoses."]

First at all, we have to admit that Vagn Holmboe (1909-1996) is not only the most important Danish composer after Nielsen ; besides he has not received yet the entire diffusion his musical legacy deserves.

These Four symphonic metamorphoses were composed between 1954 and 1972 : it's to say during the 45's and 63's of his prolonged existence.

As a matter of fact, I am totally agree with the statement of the composer when he literally affirms: " The metamorphoses is the strongest formal principle currently available; they have a goal." Moreover I would add, the very fact of the term suggests us two key clues, like continuous transformation and perpetual evolution, this is the main difference respect the "Variations" concept, so in vogue during the XIX century.

Listening them we can appreciate how they express the gradual transformation into his craft.

The first of them "Epitaph" (22:01) is robust, tinged with a febrile anguish and nurtured by aggressive passages that reminds us to Shostakovich, in three movements.

The second one, "Monolith" owns the major vitality underlined by the powerful attacks of the percussion, it's the shortest of all of them (8.25) in just one movement.

The third (I must confess) is perhaps the most arresting and absorbing of the whole set (Please notice when the work is in the 19:42, how admirably Holmboe cites textually to Prokoviev, specifically " Scythe Suite". Hovered by fascinating dissonances, expansive modulations, acidic nostalgia and powerful declamatory praising.

The last metamorphoses is the most solemn and at certain extent the most tragic of the set.

This album has been probably the most gratifying and rewarding musical experience of this year. A superb album that really deserves all the best praisings.

Don't miss it under no pretext.

For a time starting in the 1950s, the Danish composer Vagn Holmboe was obsessed with the idea of "metamorphosis", the organic development of a piece out of a single initial cell such that each musical twist and turn was linked with the utmost logic to what precedes and follows, and everything proceeds toward a clear final goal. The reference for this style are the late symphonies of Sibelius, and indeed Holmboe paid tribute to this Nordic spirit in his masterpiece Symphony No. 8 "Sinfonia boreale". Metamorphosis is also key to his abortive Ninth, the "Sinfonia in memoriam", and to a lesser extent the Ninth and Tenth.

But while Holmboe's symphonies are a must-hear achievement of 20th century music (see my review), his exploration of organic form goes beyond the cycle of symphonies and there's further good music to seek out where metamorphosis is treated in an even more rigorous fashion. On this BIS disc, Owain Arwel Hughes leads the Aalborg Symphony Orchestra in the four works composed between 1954 and 1972 that Holmboe termed "Symphonic Metamorphoses".

"Epitaph" op. 68 (1954) is cast in three movements, fast-slow-fast. It is most clearly representative of the metamorphosis concept in the way its initial melodic cell remains clearly audible from one section of the orchestra even as dizzying transformations are applied to it by other instrumental groups. Holmboe's orchestration and use of dynamic creates a sense of constant violence and pathos, but always held in check by opposing forces -- this is a fundamentally sober and balanced neoclassical composer, not a Romantic one in spite of superficial comparisons to Shostakovich or Prokofiev.

"Monolith" op. 76 (1960) is the shortest of the set, a one-movement work lasting less than nine minutes. It nonetheless strikes a fearsome mood with its use of low percussion.

"Epilogue" op. 80 has its basic cell repeated on low strings, with a proliferation of development above it. The minutes into this single-movement work, the music dwindled to silence and then starts all over again -- or does it? The link between the first and second sections is tenuous, but is ultimately proven undeniable. The same happens another ten minutes on, when the music dissolves into snare drum rolls, but the piece triumphantly gathers its fragments.

The fourth symphonic metamorphosis "Tempo Variabile" op. 108 (1971-72) stands apart from the others in the series, having been written much later when Holmboe's style had begun to change. The "late Holmboe" is more severe and strained, without the distinctive use of pitched percussion that made earlier works so colourful. Still, this four-movement work is solidly written.