Holmboe String Quartet No 1 (Erling Bloch Quartet, 1951)

Vagn Holmboe: String Quartet No. 1, Op. 46 (1949)
The Erling Bloch Quartet:
Erling Bloch, violin I
Lavard Friisholm, violin II
Hans Kassow, viola
Asger Lund Christiansen, cello

Recorded April 9, 1951, in Copenhagen, Denmark, on Gramophone Company 78-rpm matrices 2CS 2967 through 2CS 2972. Issued as HMV DB 20137 through DB 20139 (the Danish red label automatic sequence series).

Holmboe's String Quartet No. 1 is in three movements:

1. Affetuoso; Animato (at 3:03)
2. Adagio (at 9:27); Andante (at 12:19); Presto (at 14:28)
3. Lento un poco (at 17:37); Molto vivace (at 18:32)

Vagn Holmboe (1909-1996) composed no less than ten string quartets - not all of them completed, however - before releasing his "official" first three quartets, all written in 1949 and with consecutive opus numbers (46, 47, 48). He then went on to compose seventeen more quartets for an official total of twenty, a twenty-first being left incomplete at his death.

The First String Quartet, Op. 46, was dedicated to, and premièred by, the Erling Bloch Quartet. It shares its three-movement pattern with only two other of Holmboe's quartets, the Fifth and Seventh. The outer movements are both fast, with slow introductions - rather longer in the case of the first movement, which opens with a long viola solo. The fast section, although in 4-4 time, makes much use of a rhythmic division of 3+3+2 eighth notes, rather reminiscent of Tippett's Concerto for Double String Orchestra.

The second movement is sectional, as follows:
a) Adagio, 4-4 time, over a G-sharp pedal in the cello.
b) poco più mosso e fluente, 3-4, in which pizzicato glissandi in the cello recall Bartók.
c) Andante, featuring double-stopped appoggiaturas in the violins, fortissimo, with answering phrases in the viola and cello, piano. This gives way to a section featuring trills, then the appoggiaturas return, leading to -
d) Presto, 6-8 time, which functions as a scherzo.
e) a coda that features greatly abbreviated recapitulations of c), b) and a).

The last movement's introduction is chordal, and its fast section, in strict 5-4 time throughout, bristles with kinetic energy. There is a slackening towards the end, but the last bars are fortissimo, a tempo.