performed by the Kontra Quartet, available on Spotify (cover image by Arash Asghari) Vagn Holmboe’s fourth quartet dates from 1954, about four years after the previous quartet. This was already after his eighth symphony, and he would go back and revise this … Continue reading Holmboe String Quartet no. 4, op. 63
performed by Mikkel Futtrup, violin; Tim Frederiksen, viola; and the Danish National Chamber Orchestra under Hannu Koivula, available on Spotify (cover image by Eberhard Grossgasteiger) We have a special guest in today’s episode. This isn’t quite how I expected to … Continue reading Holmboe Chamber Concerto no. 9 for violin and viola, op. 39
performed by the Aarhus Symphony Orchestra under Owain Arwel Hughes, available on Spotify (cover image by Charlie Wild) One of the difficult things about some of these more obscure works, no matter how rewarding it is to discover (and yes, even to … Continue reading Holmboe Symphony no. 1, op. 4
performed by the Kontra Quartet (no YouTube, but you can listen to the work, at least to snippets, at Dacapo’s website for the complete quartets, here, or on Spotify, if that’s something you have. (cover image by Jeremy Bishop) Holmboe’s … Continue reading Holmboe String Quartet no. 3
performed by the Sjælland String Quartet (cover image by Kawin Harasai) Paul August von Klenau was born on February 11, 1883 in Copenhagen, and he there studied under Otto Malling, who himself studied under Niels Gade. (I wrote about Malling’s … Continue reading Paul von Klenau: String Quartet no. 1 in Em
performed by the Kontra Quartet (unfortunately there isn’t a recording on YouTube, but go check out all of Holmboe’s quartets on Spotify) (cover image by Trần Anh Tuấn) Covering this second quartet today means we’re 10% of the way through his twenty … Continue reading Holmboe String Quartet no. 2, op. 47
performed by Mikkel Futtrup, Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra & Hannu Koivula (Again, no YouTube for today, but get used to it. Buy your music or at the very least support your artists and record labels through Spotify. You can find … Continue reading Holmboe Chamber Concerto no. 6 for violin and chamber orchestra, op. 33
performed by Johannes Søe Hansen, violin; Christina Bjørkøe, piano (cover image by Maciej Rusek) In her review of the album on which this recording appears, Catherine Nelson describes the work as “nimble and lovely” with “fluid, folk-inspired phrases.” If you read … Continue reading Holmboe Violin Sonata no. 2, op. 16
performed by Johannes Søe Hansen, violin; Christina Bjørkøe, piano (cover image by Jack Anstey) As I said at the beginning of the year, we’ve got a new series on the blog, an ongoing one, and Holmboe was one of the first … Continue reading Holmboe Violin Sonata no. 1, op. 2a
And here we are again at the end of another month of marvelous music. I feel like if I could get around to doing more of these series for more individual nations/cultures, there would be so many gems to discover. … Continue reading Danish December: wrap-up
performed by Barbara Hannigan and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under Andris Nelsons, or below with Hannigan and the Gothenburg Symphony under Kent Nagano Abrahamsen – let me tell you from Göteborgs Symfoniker on Vimeo. Hans Abrahamsen was born on … Continue reading Hans Abrahamsen: let me tell you
performed by the Odense Symphony Orchestra under Edward Serov (please note that the ‘third symphony’ on YouTube is actually his first. That’s an error. It’s a nice piece, but not the one we’ll talk about today. There’s no video available … Continue reading Ib Nørholm: Symphony no. 3, op. 57 ‘Day’s Nightmare’
performed by the Danish National Symphony Orchestra under Leif Segerstam I remember that every section of the symphony came to me, at strange moments, in a ‘complete vision’, like a sounding vision in time. Quoted from the composer, here Per … Continue reading Per Nørgård: Symphony no. 1, op. 13 ‘Sinfonia austera’
performed by the Kontra Quartet In his book Surprised by Beauty, Robert R. Reilly suggests taking the Holmboe quartets in their published order, saying they might be the most challenging listens of everything the composer wrote. He hails Holmboe’s output as … Continue reading Holmboe String Quartet no. 1, op. 46
performed by the Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra under Thomas Dausgaard A week ago, we discussed Rued Langgaard’s first symphony, an enormous five-movement thing of craggy, youthful, ambitious Romantic music, if not a bit too ambitious for a kid of only … Continue reading Langgaard Symphony no. 12 ‘Helsingeborg’, BVN 318
performed by the Aarhus Symphony Orchestra under Owain Arwel Hughes (sorry- no video for this work. I highly, strongly recommend purchasing at least whatever album the fifth symphony appears on, if not the entire cycle, but I can understand that that may … Continue reading Vagn Holmboe: Symphony no. 5, op. 35
performed by the Jena Philharmonic Orchestra under Frank Cramer, a world premiere recording, or below by the Danish Composers’ Society Niels Finn Høffding was born on 10 March 1899 in Copenhagen. He studied under a person I wanted to introduce earlier, … Continue reading Finn Høffding: Symphony no. 3, op. 12
performed by Steve’s Bedroom Band (I think) (more about that below), or from a very recent recording on Dacapo, linked below (second, third and fourth movements) Gustav Helsted was born 30 January, 1857, and was a composer. That’s literally all … Continue reading Gustav Helsted: String Quartet no. 4 in Fm, op. 33
‘Mountain Pastorals’ performed by the Arthur Rubinstein Philharmonic Orchestra under Ilya Stupel, or below by the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra under Thomas Dausgaard in what is likely a better performance, or this one with Segerstam Rud Immanuel Langgaard (spelled like … Continue reading Rued Langgaard: Symphony no. 1, BVN 32, ‘Klippepastoraler’
performed by the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra under Neeme Järvi, with Soile Isokoski and Jorma Hynninen Nielsen’s third symphony premiered on 28 February 1912, in the same concert as the premiere of his violin concerto, this time with the composer on the … Continue reading Nielsen Symphony no. 3, op. 27 “Sinfonia Espansiva”
performed by the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra under Neeme Järvi So… The inevitable Carl Nielsen. This is (likely) the Dane you’re looking for. I’d written multiple articles on works of Nielsen in the past, but they’re kind of like the middle … Continue reading Revisit: Nielsen Symphony no. 1 in Gm, op. 7
Fugue for Thought 