Concertos (Incls Concerto No.8 'sinfonia Concertante')

"The music also seems eminently danceable, making its neglect all the more astonishing. Heartily recommended."
(Gramophone Feb 2004)

Vagn Holmboe (1909-1996) is not only the leading Danish symphonist after Carl Nielsen but one of the most successful symphonic composers of the latter half of the 20th century. Ten years ago BIS started a pioneering undertaking to record all of Vagn Holmboe's thirteen symphonies. (In fact, when we started the cycle there were twelve symphonies but Holmboe completed his thirteenth symphony while the project was still in progress.) Vagn Holmboe has an important place in the BIS catalogue and it seems fitting to celebrate the tenth anniversary of our first Holmboe recording with a new orchestral release: a disc of concertos for orchestra. The disc also includes a suite which Holmboe produced from the music that he wrote for a ballet entitled The Ill-tempered Turk. For some reason the production of the ballet kept getting postponed and Holmboe was encouraged to turn the music into an orchestral suite. When it came to the point, however, he rewrote much of the music and the suite is no mere collection of episodes but a carefully constructed whole. Once again the quality of Holmboe's writing is instantly apparent. Doubtless his large following will be eager to acquaint themselves with this programme performed by the Aalborg Symphony Orchestra under Owain Arwel Hughes - who was responsible for conducting the symphony cycle.