The Danish composer Bo Holten (b. 1948) states his objectives with exemplary clarity in the booklet. Simply because we live in ''inconstant and capricious'' times, he seeks to bring loose ends together in his music, ''to give coherence to a lot of apparently heterogeneous material''. The principle is admirable, yet the music seems determinedly inchoate—less a matter of loose ends, more of unfocused, muddled centres. It's as if the material Holten invents—often suggesting simple tonal ostinatos—is genuinely, not 'apparently', heterogeneous, and wishes to stay that way despite all his attempts to conceal the fact.
Maybe sheer length is part of the problem: the Clarinet Concerto runs for well-nigh half an hour, the Sinfonia concertante for a protracted 36 minutes. In the end, however, it's the ideas themselves which fail to satisfy, and all the more so when dense and lyrical material alike seems stretched out to the point where insistence becomes an irritant. I suppose that, to the extent that the basic formal procedures and the general characteristics of the ideas are nothing if not consistent, it could be said that Holten does indeed achieve his integrating aim. But if what is being integrated fails to appeal, the 'achievement' is something of a mixed blessing.
These often congested scores have been recorded at a ferociously high level by performers who clearly entertain no doubts about the value of the enterprise. Perhaps the key to it all is the quotation of the 'riot' motif from Act 2 of Wagner's Die Meistersinger that pops up during the Clarinet Concerto. This particular listener certainly felt as bruised and battered as Beckmesser at the end.'