Like MS (reviewing the previous Marco Polo issue, 12/95), I have found that my (albeit few) previous encounters with Joseph Holbrooke’s orchestral music have always left me rather underwhelmed. However, I’m pleased to report that the three chamber works on this generous new Marco Polo anthology created a rather more favourable impression.
In many ways, the String Sextet (1902) is the most immediately striking and attractive offering here. Immensely fluent and expertly conceived for the medium, it contains more than its fair share of felicitous inspiration, not least in the main Allegro con brio section of the first movement, which positively swaggers along in 5/4 time. The ensuing Andantino molto features a more flowing central episode (marked Poco allegro and, if I’m not mistaken, another five-beats-in-the-bar creation), whereas the Molto vivace finale is perhaps more conventional. From 2'56'' onwards, there’s some effectively busy fugal writing (a Holbrooke trademark, as far as I can tell), while the joyful coda draws the threads together with satisfying cogency.
The opening of the Symphonic Quintet No. 1 (1904), with its expectant, chugging rhythms, promises great things, but the remainder of the movement never quite gels, for all the big-boned, romantic gestures on show. Both the attractive slow movement (whose principal theme starts exactly like an extremely well-known lullaby – I won’t spoil the surprise!) and graceful, succeeding “Valse Diabolique” (which is anything but diabolical to my ears) are pleasing enough, and in the finale Holbrooke’s writing displays his customary effortless resource.
Finally, we have the Piano Quartet. This actually began life in 1898 as a piano trio, but Holbrooke subsequently refashioned it and the piece was first heard in its present guise in March 1905. The central movement, which bears the title “Lament”, contains the best music, its main theme comprising a sweetly touching idea with more than a hint of Celtic enchantment about it. Otherwise, the sturdy opening movement is perhaps a bit too long for its material; the discursive finale, too, rather fails to live up to the promise of its boldly rhetorical Maestoso introduction. On the whole, I found that direct comparison with another almost exactly contemporaneous British piano quartet – namely William Hurlstone’s very fine specimen from 1904 on a Lyrita LP, 7/84 – tended to show up the relative dearth of truly memorable melodic invention in Holbrooke’s otherwise pleasingly accomplished essay.
Highly proficient, committed performances one and all, excellently recorded into the bargain. Worth a listen, especially for the Sextet.'