Vagn Holmboe (1909-1996) is one of the most groundbreaking Danish composers, especially known for his chamber music and symphonies. But he was never open publically about his deeply spiritual side. We're looking forward to releasing the album Works for Choir and Ensemble with world premiere recordings of three choral works, which brings us closer to the great Danish composer's cosmic and spiritual view of life, which runs like a stream through the music. 

The album will be released digitally on 23 January in a live recording with the Mogens Dahl Chamber Choir and the wind ensemble V Coloris, which is also the first release in the new Dacapo Live series. Pre-save the album here.

A new kingdom of love

Already from his teenage years, Vagn Holmboe had been familiar with the Hindu scriptures and Buddhist ideas. He chose to keep his spiritual way of thinking private, but soon you can listen to three works where we meet this unknown side of Holmboe.

The album opens with the great work Die Erfüllung from 1990 for choir and wind instruments, in which Holmboe uses texts by the German poet Novalis. The text embraces a magically idealistic worldview and ideas of a new kingdom of love. The work opens with festive brass fanfares and the choir sings about a new world and what awaits when we recognise the deep cosmic truths.

The work was premiered at an international Rudolf Steiner Congress in Skanderborg and has lived within that framework. This may explain why the work has remained unknwon to the wider public, just like the text would have seemed obscure and incomprehensible to most people.

An important rediscovery

You can also listen to Song at Sunset from 1978 with a text by Walt Whitman, in which Holmboe demonstrates his mastery of vocal polyphony with sensuous praise of the sunset and the everchanging nature. The third work Ode til sjælen (Ode to the Soul) from 1985 is set to a text by the Romantic Danish poet Johannes Ewald. Here the poet also finds his inspiration in nature, when explaining how only God’s love can lift up the human soul. Neither Song at Sunset nor Ode to the Soul have been particularly well known, but like Die Erfüllung, both betray the composer's strong preoccupation with existense and the spiritual.

Holmboe was never open publically about how concepts as magic, ecstacy and the cosmic lay at the heart of his musical thinking. For that reason, the works on this album have not previously been part of our picture of Holmboe. But with this album we are closer to a more complete unerstanding of one the most remarkable Danish composers.

About Dacapo Live

Works for Choir and Ensemble is the first release in the new Dacapo Live series, presenting concert recordings which capture music exactly where it happened – in the moment, in front of an audience. At their heart is immediacy: the vibrant meeting of music, performers and audience.