Josef Holbrooke - Clarinet Chamber Music

Josef HOLBROOKE (1878-1958)

Clarinet Chamber Music

Clarinet Quintet in G, Op. 27 "Ligeia"

Cyrene, Op. 88b

Eilean Shona, Op. 74 (Clarinet Quintet alternative finale)

Nocturne (Trio), Op. 57 'Fairyland'

Phryne, Op. 98b

Variations from Quintet, Op. 27

Robert Plane (Clarinet)

Lucy Gould (Violin 1)

Mia Cooper (Violin 2)

David Adams (Viola)

Alice Neary (Cello)

Sophia Rahman (Piano)

Scott Dickinson (Viola)

Release Date: 5th Jan 2015

Joseph Holbrooke (1878-1958) became known as “the cockney Wagner” after the success of his operatic trilogy The Cauldron of Annwn, based on stories from the Mabinogion. But as this collection of his chamber works with clarinet – immaculately performed by Robert Plane and colleagues – shows, the main influence on his fundamentally late-romantic style was Brahms rather than Wagner. In Clarinet Quintet Op 27, which seems to be an amalgam of several earlier chamber works and Holbrooke revised several times, Brahms’s own quintet is repeatedly evoked, though in the 1903 Variations, which originally formed part of the quintet and are recorded for the first time here, there are also hints of the Edwardian salon music that Holbrooke composed so fluently. A couple of pieces for clarinet and piano touch on English impressionism, while perhaps the most intriguing piece here is a nocturne, Fairyland, for clarinet, viola and piano, based on a poem by Edgar Allan Poe and conjuring up a strangely disjointed, discomfiting world.

Holbrooke was regarded as a composer who never merely followed the trends of the times; like every great artist, he continued to develop solely within his own idiom. Here. Robert Plane, the principal clarinetist of the Northern Sinfonia, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, joins forces with other renowned soloists for the interpretation of these sound pictures rich in refined color.