Josef Holbrooke (1878-1958), like his countryman Granville Bantock, wrote a large quantity of colorful orchestral music in a well-crafted, slightly Straussian vein; but like so many of his contemporaries both at home and abroad, he seemed unable to “let go” and indulge in the sort of decadent orchestral gluttony we expect and demand from the best turn-of-the-century composers. Nevertheless, there’s plenty to enjoy here. Amontillado and Ulalume are both based on stories/poems by Edgar Allan Poe. The former is surprisingly chipper given the subject matter, at least until the end, but Ulalume is wonderfully atmospheric and twilit.
The variations on Three Blind Mice are, as you might expect, cute and fun, but you can’t help harboring the nagging suspicion that a quarter of an hour of it is perhaps too much of a good thing. Holbrooke’s symphonic poem The Viking also tends to overstay its welcome: it needs a really good tune and never quite manages to deliver one, but it has compelling episodes once it gets moving. Howard Griffiths and his Frankfurters deliver committed performances, with only the strings sounding a touch thin and scruffy now and again (and never seriously so). The sonics are quite good. Worth a listen.
