Vagn Holmboe - String Quartets, Vol. 1 (Nightingale String Quartet)

Information

Composer: Vagn Holmboe

• String Quartet No. 1, Op. 46, M. 159
• String Quartet No. 3, Op. 48, M. 165
• String Quartet No. 15, Op. 135, M. 291

Nightingale String Quartet

Gunvor Sihm & Josefine Dalsgaard, violins

Marie Louise Broholt Jensen, viola

Louisa Schwab, cello

Date: 2021

Label: Dacapo

https://www.dacapo-records.dk/en/recordings/holmboe-string-quartets-vol-1-0

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Review

Holmboe’s First and Third Quartets (both completed in 1949) first appeared on LP in the 1950s, recorded respectively by the Erling Bloch (HMV, 5/52) and Koppel Quartets (Decca, 9/56); both can be found on YouTube but with rather thin sound. These and the Fifteenth (1977 78) coupled here were recorded again in the 1960s and ’70s by the marvellous Copenhagen Quartet, for whom Holmboe wrote many of his later quartets – immaculate readings whose availability was only fitful outside Denmark and not, I believe, transferred to CD. Only in the 1990s was a full cycle completed, also on Dacapo, from the Kontra Quartet.

It must be said that these new accounts by the Nightingale Quartet are at the very least competitive with their forebears and the finest to date sonically. In many respects, they follow similar trajectories through the works as did the Kontra, though in No 1 they are more measured in the opening Affettuoso – animato but more energised in the dancelike finale. (Neither, though, can match the white-hot Erling Bloch Quartet in 1951 for pace.) In general, however, the Nightingales bring more light and shade to this marvellous music, enhancing Holmboe’s Bartókian structure. This is particularly acute in No 3, with its three slow movements separated by two vivacious interludes, where the Nightingales have greater flow throughout.

The Kontra’s recording of No 15 was more spacious; reviewing it I noted its ‘grave, concentrated’ manner, its heart being ‘the Funèbre third movement, a searching and dramatic funeral march’. Here the Nightingales are again more measured in each movement except the lively finale, where they outpace the Kontra. Overall, this is a most promising start to an essential, richly recorded survey of what, as the late Robert Layton observed, remains a match for any other quartet cycle produced in the second half of the 20th century.

-- Guy Rickards, Gramophone

More reviews:

ClassicsToday  ARTISTIC QUALITY: 9 / SOUND QUALITY: 9

https://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2021/Jan/Holmboe-qts-v1-8226212.htm

https://artmusiclounge.wordpress.com/2020/12/05/holmboes-string-quartets/

https://limelight-arts.com.au/reviews/holmboe-string-quartets-vol-1-nightingale-string-quartet/

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Vagn Holmboe (20 December 1909 – 1 September 1996) was a Danish composer and teacher. Holmboe studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen under Knud Jeppesen (theory) and Finn Høffding (composition). He composed about 370 works, including 13 symphonies, three chamber symphonies, four symphonies for strings, 20 string quartets, numerous concertos, one opera, and the late series of preludes for chamber orchestra, as well as much choral and other music. His students included Per Nørgård, Ib Nørholm, Bent Lorentzen, Arne Nordheim, Egil Hovland and Alan Stout.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vagn_Holmboe

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Nightingale String Quartet was formed in 2007 and consists of Gunvor Sihm and Josefine Dalsgaard, violins, Marie Louise Broholt Jensen, viola, and Louisa Schwab, cello. All four are students in the soloist course at the academies in Copenhagen and Aarhus with Professor Tim Frederiksen as mentor and chamber music teacher. Since September 2012 the quartet has also studied regularly with Professor Hatto Beyerle, founder of the Alban Berg Quartet and ECMA (European Chamber Music Academy). The Quartet has won prizes in several chamber music competitions in Denmark and abroad.
https://www.dacapo-records.dk/en/artist-nightingale-string-quartet.aspx
http://www.nightingalestringquartet.com/

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