Vagn Holmboe (1909-96) is the most prominent Danish symphonist since Carl Nielsen. With his teaching and his many works from a composing career of over sixty years, Holmboe has a great influence on Danish music and Nordic music in general. He composed about 400 works, and has now finally achieved his definitive international breakthrough. Holmboe`s music is luminously clear and precise, striking in its lines and rhythms. Over the years Holmboe was greatly preoccupied with the folk music principle of going straight to the core of the music. He combined this with his own symphonic turn of mind, with roots as far back as Haydn. Even in his shorter pieces Holmboe was unmistakably a symphonist. The structures are clear and strong, and the music develops organically from simple material into a balanced totality. Holmboe`s central genres are the symphony and the string quartet. He composed fourteen symphonies and 21 string quartets in the finest European tradition. In addition we must single out his instrumental concertos (from 1939 until 1956 he wrote thirteen concertos for one or more soloists and chamber orchestra), and the choral works, several of which are already classics of Nordic music and are sung by both professionals and amateurs. Holmboe himself has long enjoyed classic status as one of the leading Nordic composers of this century.
01 January 2010 Fanfare Magazine
CD 8.226063 (2009)
A most convincing love of music-making is evident in these works by the master Holmboe
CD 8.226101-02 (2009)
An outstanding introduction to the clear-sighted master of 20th-century Nordic music
SACD 6.220526 (2006)
One of the world’s best trombonists shines in works by among others Holmboe and Launy Grøndahl
CD 8.226007 (2005)
CD 8.226009 (2005)
CD 8.226017-18 (2004)
CD 8.226001 (2003)
CD 8.224207 (2002)
CD 8.224131 (2001)
CD 8.224124 (2001)
CD 8.224128 (2001)
CD 8.224123 (2000)
CD 8.224127 (1999)
CD 8.224101 (1998)
CD 8.224087 (1998)
CD 8.224073 (1997)
CD 8.224086 (1997)
CD 8.224063 (1997)
CD 8.224038 (1996)
CD 8.224043 (1996)
CD 8.224026 (1996)
CD 8.224018 (1995)
Organ meets harp and percussion in works from the end of the 20th century
CD 8.224010 (1995)
Songs from the post-war era by among others Herman D. Koppel and Vagn Holmboe
CD 8.224001 (1994)
Carl Nielsen’s masterpiece and more recent quintets by Abrahamsen, Holmboe and Nørgård
DCCD 9203 (1993)
DCCD 9204 (1993)