At last the Holmboe quartets are making a long overdue appearance on CD. In one of our contemporaries I see that Paul Rapoport has hailed the Danish master as ''one of the finest composers of the last hundred years''. This sort of claim, of course, invites instant dismissal from those who speak from the vantage point of a nodding acquaintance with his music (on the principle that if I haven't heard of it, it can't be any good: are other disciplines so pitifully afflicted by the opinionated and ignorant as music?). However, those who do know Holmboe's works well may feel his claim is not a whit exaggerated. It is true that his music has a certain reserve. Its impact is not always immediate: he relies on the cumulative effect of a work rather than on isolated details of colour and textures. Among Nordic symphonists there are few that are as masterful, as searching or as profound.
According to Rapoport's catalogue published in 1979 in honour of the composer's seventieth birthday, Holmboe wrote ten string quartets between 1926 and 1944, the year of his Fifth Symphony, before publishing his first numbered quartet in 1949. No doubt these exorcized the spell of Bartok, Hindemith and other contemporaries, for by the time we reach the three 1949 quartets his voice is completely distinctive. While there have been long gaps between the symphonies, as much as 17 years between Nos. 8 (1952) and 9 (1969), he has been consistently involved with the quartet medium.
His first three quartets were all written in quick succession in 1949, the year before the Seventh Symphony, which the closing bars of the first movement of the First Quartet foreshadow. The Fourth belongs to 1953-4 and is a highly concentrated and compelling piece. At the present time Holmboe's output numbers no fewer than 20 string quartets and although I do not know all of them, I know the vast majority and can testify to their enduring qualities. Not only are they finer than any other Nordic cycle, including that of Hilding Rosenberg, they are without question the finest since those of Nielsen and Stenhammar. Those who admire the Shostakovich and Simpson quartets will warm to them.
None of these pieces is new to the gramophone, although the earlier versions have now been deleted. The Kontra Quartet are good news: they play all these works with splendid eloquence and without any trace of the expressive emphasis I have at times felt in their performances, and the engineering is exemplary. Indeed, all three are masterly accounts and worthy of the music itself. The disc states ''Volume I'' and it augurs well for future issues. Recommended with enthusiasm.'