Vagn Holmboe: Symphony No. 8, "Sinfonia boreale" (Owain Hughes)

[@genebales4104]

Heard this symphony many years ago. It's a joy to hear it again--it is a wonderfully imaginative work which needs to be heard more often!

[@bowerdw]

A listenable intense work. It appears that it is another unnoticed music project in an ocean of great works.

[@Miglokis]

Maybe the best symphony of Holmboe

[@BertoldBR74Roux]

The ending is marvellous!

[@Peter41981]

This is a masterpiece.

[@pectenmaximus231]

This is AWESOME

[@raoul2u]

Great symphony!

[@12corners]

Do stay till the last movement - where the music gets very scary indeed!

[@kuang-licheng402]

great

[@philipgoddard-composer]

Back sometime in 1969-74 I bought the Turnabout LP vinyl release of this symphony (coupled with Nørgard's 'Constellations') on the basis of an enthusiastic review in the Gramophone magazine, and it truly was a landmark musical discovery for me. Not only was the symphony hair-raisingly vividly painting some compelling inner 'story' of a breathtaking intensity, but the whole musical idiom and approach to form and structure (constant motivic evolution / metamorphosis) was in the home territory of my own inner musical improvisations. Indeed, it seemed that I'd heard all of this symphony before, but yet it's extremely unlikely that I'd previously heard it anywhere *in this lifetime*. When I eventually got composing my own Symphony 1 (Sagarmatha) in 1995 (my public Opus 1, kzbin.info/www/bejne/aoibdYN5icyLsM0 ), a couple of ideas from Holmboe's 8th presented themselves for me to use early in the first movement - but, interestingly, although I did use them, in that context they were problematical elements (i.e., 'adversaries' within the musical narrative), which were there to rapidly get expunged, assisting the 'search' of that movement's title to get moving in an ultimately much more healthy-feeling direction. As regards this recording of Holmboe's 8th, I do find it somewhat disappointing compared with the older one by Jerzy Semkow and the Royal Danish Orchestra. That team seem to me to have got inside the music more effectively, also helped by a better orchestral balance (/acoustic?), which allows important small details to be more readily heard during the louder / wilder passages. In the first movement in particular, just a tad taken off the speed in this version would have helped, for the wild pasages there do lose a lot of actually quite important detail. The matter of keeping as much detail as possible reasonably audible is particularly important in this and other mature symphonic works of Holmboe because of all the motivic development / metamorphosis that's going on. So, a small detail at one point may sing out dramatically later on, for example, but of course the proper effect is lost if you don't hear that motif before when it was still in something of a gestational state. Sadly I couldn't find more than the first movement of the Semkow recording of this Symphony on KZbin, but here's the link, so people can get an alternative perspective of at least the first movement: kzbin.info/www/bejne/mZOZeoSEh86Eb68 . That becomes really telling in that full recording of the symphony, because you've heard much more clearly the germinal motifs of the first movement, and again hear more clearly their hair-raisingly evocative succesive re-emergence in the final movement, like landmarks towards a weary final homecoming from some epic journey....

[@jmd555555]

Me too - about the same time. Rosenberg's 6th Symphony was another great Turnabout LP discovery for me from that time.

[@TheRealRedAce]

I got the same recording at about the same time. A landmark for me too!

[@jgesselberty]

Add me to the list. I had that same Turnabout LP and loved the music. Not much Holmboe available back then. The title intrigued me and the music captivated me.

[@CsrlWiener]

Holmboes quartets are very beautiful

[@jackklamm5709]

it's a wonderful piece! is there any way you can upload the rest of his symphonies as well ?

[@ev_ing]

What's the painting?

[@dailowe]

Evan Ingalls : It's Combers by Andrew Wyeth

[@ev_ing]

Thank you! I love it :)

[@christophermacintyre5890]

Similar in style to Estonian composer Eduard Tubin, but (just my opinion) no where near as appealing. Nice to have a chance to hear them, though.

[@BertoldBR74Roux]

Sometimes inspired by Shostakowich

[@carlosenrique5299]

I believe that there is a certain custom in identifying with Shostakovich broad passages in the symphonies of these Nordic composers. He already passed me by reading some comments about Per Norgard's Symphony No. 1 and now it happens again, nothing less than this No. 8 by Van Holmboe. But my ears seldom catch Shostakovich. In this work I seem to hear more of the Sibelius by Tapiola or the Prelude to La Tempestad, apart from the fact that the classic Sibelian pedal is present in many passages of this Symphony.