The Nightingale String Quartet, the ensemble performing on this album, was the first ensemble ever to receive Gramophone's Young Artist of the Year Award in 2014.
Composer's Artistic Vision
Holmboe's compositional method, called metamorphosis, involves developing music from a small seed of tones or intervals into a widely branched motivic development.
Instruments
The Nightingale String Quartet performs on instruments generously loaned to them by the Augustinus Foundation.
Recording & Production
This album is part of the Nightingale String Quartet's ambitious project to record all of Vagn Holmboe's complete string quartets, a series that began in 2021.
Composer Biography
Vagn Holmboe, a Danish composer, initially aimed to write around 10 symphonies, a goal he surpassed by composing 13 symphonies, four symphonic metamorphoses, and a Sinfonia in memoriam.
Composition History
Holmboe discarded ten string quartets before he was satisfied enough to give opus numbers to his first two in 1949, demonstrating his rigorous self-criticism in the genre.
Composer's Artistic Vision
Holmboe defended his metamorphosis technique in his 1961 book Mellemspil (Intermezzo) as an alternative to the avant-garde practices of serialism and aleatoric music.
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