Vagn Holmboe - String Quartets, Vol. 2 (Nightingale String Quartet)

Information

Composer: Vagn Holmboe

• String Quartet No. 2, Op. 47
• String Quartet No. 14, Op. 125
• Quartetto sereno, Op. 197 posth. (Quartet No. 21 completed by Per Nørgård)

Nightingale String Quartet

Gunvor Sihm & Josefne Dalsgaard, violins

Marie Louise Broholt Jensen, viola

Louisa Schwab, cello

Date: 2022

Label: Dacapo

https://www.dacapo-records.dk/en/recordings/holmboe-string-quartets-vol-2-0

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Review

The Nightingale Quartet’s first volume (3/21) opened with Holmboe’s first published quartet, Op 46, and this second concludes with his final thoughts on the medium, the Quartetto sereno. Started in late spring 1996, two months before his death, Holmboe only managed to sketch two movements, a tranquil, opening Adagio surrounding a more animated Con fuoco central section, succeeded by an initially pizzicato scherzo marked Allegro, which concludes Adagio. Holmboe’s former student and great friend Per Nørgård fashioned the sketches into the present diptych in 1997 and I can provide no better description of the result than his: ‘a short, beautiful and moving epilogue’.

In an increasingly mad world, there is much to be said for the sanity of Holmboe’s music. The principal works here are the Second and Fourteenth Quartets. No 2 (1949) is in some respects the bright heart of that first group of quartets, a relaxation (of sorts – there is plenty of drama) that explored further the Bartókian landscapes of the First, not least in the arch-like structure of its five movements. By contrast, the delightful and gently quixotic Fourteenth (1975), one of the most immediate in appeal of his later quartets, is cast in six short movements: slow-fast-fast-slow-fast-fast.

The Kontra Quartet’s pioneering 1990s recordings remain the only available competition for all three quartets, and fine as they remain, the Nightingale’s are finer still. As with Vol 1, Dacapo’s warmer sound captures the Nightingale’s fuller, richer tone wonderfully; the Kontras sound hard and thin by comparison. The Nightingales are less clinical than their predecessors, too, paying dividends in their tauter account of No 2, with the opening Allegro fluente truly fluente. The Nightingales take a more expansive route through the Fourteenth (by almost three minutes) and are also markedly slower in the Sereno’s opening Adagio. These, then, are new, original interpretations of one of Denmark’s hidden gems, on which they are casting much-deserved light.

-- Guy Rickards, Gramophone

More reviews:
https://musicwebinternational.com/2023/01/holmboe-quartets-vol-2-dacapo/

https://artmusiclounge.wordpress.com/2022/05/21/holmboes-string-quartets-vol-2/

https://limelight-arts.com.au/reviews/vagn-holmboe-string-quartets-vol-2-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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