In welcoming the first CD in this series (6/94) I spoke of the performances as masterly and “worthy of the music itself”. This new disc is hardly less impressive. Although over half of the Holmboe quartets were issued on LP (Nos. 1-11 and 15 and 16), they have been tardy in making their way into the CD catalogue. Those who know them well will know that the claims made on their behalf are not a whit exaggerated. True, the quartets have a certain reticence and rely on their cumulative effect rather than on beauty of incident. There is no more an attempt to cultivate a popular appeal than there is in the quartets of Sir Michael Tippett or Robert Simpson. And, like Simpson, Holmboe is perhaps more at home with the string quartet than any other medium. He had written ten between 1926 and 1944 before actually publishing his first numbered quartet, and was only relatively recently finishing No. 20.
The Second Quartet comes from 1949, between the Sixth and Seventh Symphonies, and like its two immediate neighbours, speaks with a distinctive voice. It has freshness and an immediate lyrical appeal. The Fifth came in 1955 after the Eighth Symphony and the Sixth in 1961. Both are challenging, highly concentrated pieces of an elevating and compelling eloquence. The Kontra Quartet play them with total commitment and conviction and readers need not hesitate. My only reservation concerns the Sixth Quartet, which is recorded in a less flattering acoustic than its companions with the result that the sound is harder and edgy, particularly above the stave. Nos. 2 and 5 are exemplary in every way.'