Joseph Holbrooke
Joseph Charles Holbrooke (5 July 1878 – 5 August 1958) was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He was sometimes referred to as "the cockney Wagner".
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[edit] Family
He was born Joseph Charles Holbrook in Croydon, Surrey.[1] His father, also Joseph, was a music hall musician and teacher, and his mother Helen was a Scottish singer. He had two older sisters (Helen and Mary) and two younger brothers (Robert and James).[2] His mother died when he was only two years old. When he was a young man, he and his father both taught music from the same residence, and the occasional confusion may have influenced his decision to change his name. He changed his name to Joseph Holbrooke,[3] and later to Josef Holbrooke.
Joseph and his wife Dorothy (known as 'Dot') married in 1903 and had four children: Mildred (born 1905), Anton (1908), Barbara (1909)[4] and Gwydion (1912). His son changed his name to Gwydion Brooke and was a prominent English bassoonist.
Holbrooke died in London.
[edit] Music
His musical output includes eight symphonies, many tone poems, two piano concertos, chamber music including string quartets, a piano quintet, a quintet for clarinet and strings and a piano quartet, and much music inspired by Edgar Allan Poe, including choral and orchestral settings for "The Raven" and "The Bells", and a ballet score for "The Masque of the Red Death". He also wrote a three-part operatic trilogy based on the Welsh epic the Mabinogion.
The classical music label Naxos notes that his works are rarely performed today, in part because "he made very considerable demands on the resources of promoters and the patience of listeners."[5]
His students included the conductor and composer Anthony Bernard.
[edit] Recordings
For the 50th anniversary of his death in 2008, British CD label Cameo Classics started a series of premiere recordings of Holbrooke's works for piano (including the complete Nocturnes and Rhapsodie-Etudes on CC9035CD and CC9036CD) with the Greek pianist Panagiotis Trochopoulos, who also gave the first all-Holbrooke recital at the English Music Festival in 2008 at Dorchester Abbey. Trochopoulos has prepared Holbrooke's Piano Concerto No.2 ready for recording late 2011. Cameo Classics has also recorded Holbrooke's Variations on "The Girl I Left Behind Me" (twice) with the conductor Marius Stravinsky and the Karelia Philharmonic Orchestra, and a live performance by the Orion Orchestra of London conducted by Toby Purser, and re-released its 1978 world premiere recording of Holbrooke's Piano Concerto No.1 "The Song of Gwyn ap Nudd" conducted by Geoffrey Heald-Smith with Philip Challis as soloist. "The Pantomime Suite" is taken from Holbrooke's Ballet Pierrot and Pierrette and was recorded in 2011, with Michael Laus conducting his Malta Philharmonic Orchestra.
A series of recordings of Holbrooke's orchestral works is being undertaken by the German record label, CPO. The first disc appeared in 2009 and contained the symphonic poems The Viking and Ulalume, the concert overture Amontillado and the orchestral Variations on 'Three Blind Mice', performed by the Brandenburgisches Staatsorchesterm conducted by Howard Griffiths. The British label, Dutton Epoch, has already recorded some of Holbrooke's chamber music and is now turning its attention to his middle and late period orchestral music.
[edit] Legacy
The English composer and bassist Gavin Bryars paid tribute to Holbrooke by giving the name Joseph Holbrooke to his collective free-improvising trio with Derek Bailey and Tony Oxley. Despite the name, the group never played Holbrooke's compositions.
[edit] Compositions
[edit] External links
- Josef Holbrooke - article in The Musical Times, April 1, 1913
- Joe Holbrooke - British composer, by Rob Barnett
- Biography, review and partial discography
- Update to the above, with more detail on quartets and Poeana
- Joseph Holbrooke; a biography from the classical label Naxos
- Free scores by Joseph Holbrooke at the International Music Score Library Project
