It is a pleasure to listen to this retrospective with three very different works from three different decades and savour the many-sidedness of Bo Holten’s...

It is a pleasure to listen to this retrospective with three very different works from three different decades and savour the many-sidedness of Bo Holten’s compositional genius.

 

Bo Holten has composed more than 100 works including symphonies, solo concertos, works for chorus and orchestra, operas, and musicals. He has also written works for chamber ensembles, song cycles, and pieces for percussion ensemble, as well as scores for films and television series. He is regarded as Denmark’s most prolific composer of lyric theatre and is an internationally renowned conductor. This newly-recorded retrospective includes three of his most cherished concert works: a charismatic concert opera based on Hans Christian Andersen’s The Emperor’s New Clothes, a touching song cycle to evocative poetry by Sophus Claussen and an oboe concerto inspired by the instrument’s unique lyrical capabilities. All three reveal Holten’s characteristic combination of wit and profundity, all the more so under his own musical direction.

 

REVIEW:

 

The Emperor’s New Clothes, the most recent work here, was commissioned in 2004. It is a compact score that fizzes along swiftly and the whole story is over in less than 24 minutes. The musical language is unabashedly tonal, Holten’s credo being: ‘composing without tonal harmony is like painting without colour’. He has a personal touch but borrows features from various influences: a drop of impressionism here, some minimalism there.

 

The overriding atmosphere of the Oboe Concerto is pastoral and contemplative and it certainly explores the oboe’s capacity to weave beautiful melodious threads. Here and there it is challenged by other instrumental solos and there are moments where the idyll is temporarily broken. Max Artved’s solo playing can hardly be surpassed.

 

Going further back, to 1987, we meet another woodwind soloist, in a prominent role, bassoonist Morten Østergaard in Tusmørkrets viser (Songs of Dusk), where soprano Christine Nonbo Andersen plays first fiddle. The eight songs in this song cycle follow each other seamlessly in a continuous stream.

 

 

It has been a pleasure to listen to this retrospective with three very different works from three different decades and savour the many-sidedness of Bo Holten’s compositional genius.

 

– MusicWeb International