Context

Performance

Instrumentation

-- 3*3*3*3* 4331 14 2 str, 2pf

Classification

Orkester

Subject heading

Xl

Language

First performance

Date

1966-10-08

Location

Sveriges radio

Performers

Radioorkestern, dir Stig Westerberg

Background

Comments about the work

Hans Holewa (1905-1991) immigrated in 1937, thirtytwo years of age, toSweden from a Vienna whose climate had been polluted both politically andartistically. He came from the circles around Alban Berg and Anton Webern,the avant-garde of Central Europe. If Alban Berg had not died in 1935 Holewawould have become his pupil. In Sweden he gave presentations of AntonWebern's violin pieces and was given to understand from Swedish colleaguesthat this music was already outmoded in Sweden. It took almost twenty-fiveyears before the Swedish composers' society considered it time to elect him asa member. But in the last thirty years this absolutely trendless and artisticallyuncompromising composer from Vienna won more and more of the respect thathe deserved. He will probably never be popular, however. Hans Holewa was active in Sweden as a composer, pianist, conductor, teacherand music copyist at the notation library of the Swedish BroadcastingCorporation. At times he also lashed out in writing at those whom heconsidered to be windbags and charlatans in the musical debate. For himmusic was a very serious matter. By music he meant art music in the Westerntradition. Music was for Holewa construction and invention - not improvisation orlottery. And musical creation was for him chiefly an act of will. Hans Holewa'smusic has thus grown out of a central European tradition. To its backgroundbelong Mahler and Alban Berg (more than Schönberg). Alban Berg's Lyric Suitegave him decisive impulses to approach the twelve-tone technique. Like manyother artists and intellectuals during the interwar period in Vienna, Holewa readand was stimulated by the writings of the cultural radical Karl Kraus; he did notdeny that these writings had an impact on his respect for form and exactformulations. Dostojevsky and E.T.A. Hoffmann were other writers of importanceto him. For a couple of decades the composer Holewa lived a rather anonymous life inSweden. It was mainly in the modernist circles of Uppsala and Stockholm thathe figured; where he could propagate for the twelve-tone technique. He probablywas, at the end of the 1940s, still the only one in Sweden who had mastered itin both theory and practise. Around 1950 two large-scale compositions by himwere performed at Fylkingen: Music for Two Pianos and the Lindegren cantataOch vilar inom oss ( 1952). After the cantata came six or seven years ofsilence. During these years of experiment and searching Holewa developed hisability to extract music from his twelvetone series, independent of thepost-Webern avantgarde of the 1950s. When in 1959 he finally spoke out againas a composer - he did so with his string trio - the avantgarde had passedHolewa up: he suddenly found himself a traditionalist. The String Trio was nevertheless the beginning of a rich harvest, chiefly in thefield of chamber and orchestral music. His music also gradually won recognitionin ever wider circles. Besides a number of chamber works he composed duringthe 1960s, 70s and 80s works such as Composition for Orchestra, concertosfor viola and violin, the cello concerto Four Cadenzas, the piano concerto, anumber of concertinos (of which No. 4 was written for the London Sinfonietta),several symphonies, as well as the opera The Metamorphosis of Apollo (1971)to Holewa's own text: a discussion about the importance of music, its capacityto influence and the possibilities of its being murder of Marsyas is reflected "asan appeal that sufferings not be forgotten". Hans Holewa's music is never elegant, seldom "full of verve", often intenselyexpressive and always strictly serious. Its breeding ground is a hot, humanpathos. He does not talk about the music's construction or meaning with hislisteners: "One who listens will not find a meaning in what I have said - whoeverdoesn't find anything will not be helped by counting tone series and intervalstructures anyway." It was, then, with the String Trio (1959) that Holewa broke many years ofsilence as a composer. The trio was commissioned by Fylkingen and is, likemany Swedish works, dedicated to Bo Wallner. It is one in a group of chambermusic compositions that are all based on a common material. From anintroductory motto develop four partly connected movements: one testing, onelike a prelude, one impassioned, more contrapuntal, one with continuallyvarying tempi. Holewa's trio cultivates mournful expressiveness far more thanplay and the motor element. The Piano Concerto, commissioned by the Swedish Broadcasting Corporation,was composed in 1972. Unlike Holewa's relatively brilliant Four Cadenzas forcello and orchestra from 1969 - perhaps his most successful and extrovertedorchestral work - the piano concerto sacrifices very little to brilliance. Theconcerto is a collaboration between piano and orchestra, aiming for the mostpart at meditative expressiveness, around a terse motivic material. Theintroduction's dotted rhythms, descending fourth and C-minor motif weave thelistener music whose shades are changed more by means of shiftings than bycontrasts. The concerto has three movements, of which the second followsabruptly (attacca) upon the first. In Holewa's production the designation concertino is given to a number of worksin the concerto style for small but widely varying ensemble types. ConcertinoNo. VIII was composed in 1985 for acoustic guitar and a little ensembleconsisting of flute, French horn, violin, viola and cello. The guitarist MagnusAndersson has collaborated with Holewa in the working out of the guitar. part. In this piece,which compared to e.g. the piano concerto is transparent, serene music,without sharp edges or ostentatious virtuosity, a succession of pictures isconjured up in shifting nuances. Concertino No. IX, composed by aneighty-two-year-old in 1987, stands out as one of Hans Holewa's mosttransfigured compositions, original in sound - even shimmering. The concertinowas written for the Iskra Ensemble in San Francisco, for soprano (vocalise) withvarious small percussion instruments, flutes (three sizes), clarinets (threesizes, including one bass), violin/ viola, double bass (with a small percussioninstrument) and guitar (with percussion). What Holewa had to say about singingin connection with the Third Symphony "Song, that is the human being beforethere are words". Like Concertino No. VIII, No. IX is a chain of pictures linkedtogether. For Hans Holewa duettino stands for naked "Spielmusik" in duoformat. The First Duettino was composed in 1983 for violin and guitar and hasthree movements. This is at times almost conversing chamber music, here andthere spiced with carefully selected tonal delicacies. The very brief Duettino No.2 (1984) for flute and guitar is a lyrical reflection that gradually glides into astate of weightless and blissful simplicity. Text: Göran Bergendahl, 1991. From Phono Suecia nr 49 (1991)

List

The work

Composer

Hans Holewa

Title

Komposition för orkester

Duration

21 minutes 30 seconds

Composition year

1965 - 1966

Information

Identification number

102949

Work administrator

SMIC (SMIC)

Format

SCORE

search.example

Preview

Sheet music sample (PDF)

Score