Robin Holloway sang as a chorister at St Paul's Cathedral and studied composition with Alexander Goehr as a teenager. He has been a lecturer in music at Cambridge University since 1975.
His works of the 1960s show a modernist stance, culminating in the First Concerto for Orchestra (completed 1969). This attitude has remained one strand of Holloway's thought as demonstrated by such works as Evening with Angels (1972), the much acclaimed Second Concerto for Orchestra (1979), and two works written for the London Sinfonietta, Aria (1979-80) and the Double Concerto (1987-88).
A complementary and more controversial side of Holloway's musical nature grew out of his study of language, style and quotation for his doctoral thesis Debussy and Wagner (published by Eulenburg). This has led in many works to a radical liaison with Romanticism and tonality, as in Scenes from Schumann (1969-70), the opera Clarissa (1976) premiered in 1990 at English National Opera under the baton of Oliver Knussen, and Seascape and Harvest (1983-4) composed for the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Sir Simon Rattle. A more relaxed side of the same endeavour can be seen in a series of serenade and divertimento-type pieces for differing chamber ensembles.
The Holloway discography includes premiere recordings of the Second and Third Concertos for Orchestra on NMC, the former winning the 1994 Gramophone Contemporary Record of the Year Award, the Violin Concerto and Horn Concerto played by Ernst Kovacic and Barry Tuckwell (recently re-released on the NMC label), and a CD reissue of Sea surface full of clouds and Romanza on Chandos, Hyperion released Holloway’s Fantasy Pieces and Serenade in C played by the Nash Ensemble, and Gilded Goldbergs. A collected volume of Holloway's writings, On Music: Essays and Diversions, was published by Claridge Press in 2003.
Works composed during the 1990s included Scenes from Antwerp written as the culmination of a residency with the Royal Flanders Philharmonic, Clarissa Sequence for soprano and orchestra, commissioned by the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra under Michael Tilson Thomas, and his first Symphony, premiered by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Donald Runnicles at the 2000 BBC Proms. Recent works include a Fourth Concerto for Orchestra premiered by the San Francisco Symphony under Tilson Thomas in February 2007. Future plans include a Fourth Idyll for City of London Sinfonia, Vasteras Sinfonietta, and Hong Kong Sinfonietta with first performances in the 2007/08 season, and a new wind quintet for the Britten Sinfonia.
Robin Holloway is published exclusively by Boosey & Hawkes.
August 2007
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