Richard (Rijk) Hol - a reassessment

[Alan Howe]

I hadn't played the two Chandos CDs of Hol's symphonies for some while, so when I picked the one with Nos.2 and 4 off the shelf today I was pleasantly surprised. Makes me wonder how hard I listened when I originally bought them!

Anyway, they prove to be much more interesting than I had remembered. Rhythmically No.4 is especially attractive and there's plenty of vigour and colour in the orchestral writing. And No.2 contains a particularly fine slow movement - almost up to Schumann 2 standard.

Any views on Hol?

[eschiss1]

Well, I'm curious about the other 100+ works, published and unpublished. I know a couple have shown up at IMSLP, but only a couple...

(On that subject there's http://www.nederlandsmuziekinstituut.nl/en/archives/list-of-music-archives?task=listdetail&id=2_6846 this, now that I take a quick look, with 704 manuscripts by or edited by Hol listed.

[BerlinExpat]

Any views on Hol?

Only that I wish there was more of his music available. The two CDs are among my favourite unsungs along with music by his his later compatriot Cornelis Dopper.
The fact that Chandos never progressed beyond the two CDs of Dopper's symphonies 2, 3 and 6 along with Pään I & II put me off buying any Chandos new series until they were complete. If anyone knows of recordings of his 4th & 5th symphonies, I'd be very grateful.

[Alan Howe]

The symphonies occupy that interesting, largely conservative compositional territory which clearly lies beyond Schumann and Mendelssohn. What strikes me as personal is not so much the soundscape (Hol was obviously a skilled orchestrator), but rather his occasionally quirky rhythmic sense. His music certainly moves too - there's no flab. In this sense he's a natural symphonist. I've obviously underestimated him...

By the way, simply to compare him with Schumann or Mendelssohn is just plain silly. The idiom is clearly later.

[Ilja]

Alan, I agree that the sense of rhythm typifies Hol, as does a certain quirky light-footedness that we see in very few Dutch composers - particularly ones from this period, that seemed to be bent on solidifying their legacy as 'important composers' (it is this which makes so much of Diepenbrock's work so insufferable). Unfortunately, I have the idea that it didn't help his music being taken entirely seriously. As a consequence, Hol seems to be mostly forgotten; the only major work of his that gets an incidental outing is the 2nd symphony (which I would rate among the best and certainly more 'solid' Dutch symphonies). And while composers such as Verhulst, Zweers and Dopper have gotten streets named after them, Hol's name isn't really applicable in street names without turning it into a double entendre.