Holst's planetarium (1874-1934)

[Scion7]

After only having The Planets all these years, I may be off on another composer exploration.

Gramophone had an article about his other work:


Down to Earth

From Egdon Heath to Hammersmith, Hoist's music has a rooted practicality that may come as a surprise to fans of The Planets.    Daniel Jaffé leads the way ...

Holst once warned a fellow musician: 'I'm greatly adverse to fixed principles in art...I may do something quite different tomorrow'. While certain traits resurface in many of his mature works - pithily memorable themes; bold, descending bass lines; his clear-cut orchestration with its distinctive brass writing - Holst quite often did 'do something quite different', so confusing potential listeners who want to find a follow-up to The Planets or A Somerset Rhapsody. To offer guidance in exploring the approximately a hundred works on record, this survey will attempt to highlight significant works and important in influences and phases in Holst's creativity.

Works for wind band
It may seem perverse to start with a genre often regarded as of specialist interest. Yet Holst's pioneering Suites for military band (1909 and 1911) and his Moorside Suite for brass band (1928) exemplify a fundamental principle to much of his music. Hitherto wind bands had relied on arrangements from operas and Strauss waltzes, so creating the dismal impression that they were quasi-orchestras. By writing buoyant and absolutely first-rate music to reveal the intrinsic colours and contrasts of wind and brass bands, Hoist demonstrated their potential as well as a determination to use his composing skill in the service of the normally less-exalted world of the amateur or semi-amateur musician. (He applied the same principle to his St Paul's and Brook Green Suites written for his pupils at St Paul's Girls' School.)
Hammersmith (1930) is rather different: Holst composed this ambivalent tribute to the area where he lived and worked for the virtuoso forces of the BBC's Wireless Military Band. But here again he wrote music intrinsically suited for those forces: the Prelude evokes the flowing Thames with louring heavy brass and low horns; the Scherzo portrays the lively activity of the cockney crowds with perky woodwind motifs. (Boult on Lyrita and Hickox on Chandos have both recorded his subsequent reorchestration for symphony orchestra, but the original colours tell more effectively.)
Howard Dunn, with the Dallas Wind Symphony, presents scrupulously prepared performances of all these works on a single CD (Reference Recordings). Most successful are his perky Suite No 2, and his engaging Hammersmith. Unlike many conductors, Dunn appears to heed Holst's warning that the Scherzo should sound 'easy and goodtempered and not brilliant, hard or efficient'; he treats it with unusual delicacy, coaxing out of the tough and unsentimental music a portrait of a good-natured crowd. Those who want more Holst for their money, though, might consider Denis Wick's ASV Quicksilver disc of the two Suites - affectionate accounts in excellent analogue sound (though the Hammersmith is rather stop-start, and the scores used are not quite as authentic as Dunn's) - plus David Lloyd-Jones's all-Holst Naxos CD for another vividly characterised, if harder-edged Hammersmith (in its original wind band scoring). The Grimethorpe Colliery Band's idiomatic account of Moorside (though Hoist would have applauded the Dallas band's vibrato-less style) under Elgar Howarth is available on a Decca two-CD set.

Scenas and Sanskrit works
Most musicians, it seems, agree with Holst's late daughter and champion, Imogen, that Wagner was a harmful influence on the young composer: records of his early works have favoured the lighter side of his output, ignoring such ambitious fare as Ornulfs Drapa, or such operas as his three-act Sita or The Youth's Choice. David Atherton bucked the trend with the first recording of Hoist's inspired setting of Walt Whitman's The Mystic Trumpeter: its lush harmonies and evocative orchestration are in his Wagner idiom, though the swaying woodwind chords - presaging 'Venus' - present an unmistakable moment of pure Holst. Atherton's superb Lyrita recording with Sheila Armstrong and the LSO has, alas, never appeared on CD. LloydJones, however, took up the Trumpeter's cause in a recent Naxos recording with Clare Rutter (coupled with The Planets); their account grows in excitement as it unfolds, though Lloyd-Jones' slow opening lacks the energised sense of anticipation created by Atherton.
When Holst visited Algeria in 1908, the indigenous music - rawtoned, fill of unfamiliar modes and untrammelled by the conventions of Western notation - made a powerful impact on his work, notably in four sets of Choral Hymns from the Rig Veda. David Wilicocks has recorded a generous selection of these with the RCM Chamber Choir (on UnicornKanchana, coupled with such rarities as Hymn to Dionysius): their efficient readings, however, rather miss the music's haunting spirit. Sadly, Charles Groves' atmospheric recording of the second set with the London Symphony Chorus and LPO (on EMI) is no longer available. Imogen Holst's outstanding recording of the third set with the Purcell Singers and harpist Osian Ellis, however, is now on a Decca two-CD compilation, which appropriately includes the work Hoist first began on his return from Algeria: Sãvitri.
This revolutionary chamber opera, involving just three characters and requiring little or no scene inverts the production requirements of Sita. Traces of Wagner's influence remain in the passionate dialogue between Sãvitri and Death, who has come to claim her husband; more striking is the expressive recitative-like arioso of Svitri herself, notably 'Once I knew Maya', influenced, as Hoist admitted, by the recitatives of Purcell's Dido. Imogen Hoist's premiere recording remains the best, not least for Janet Baker's warmly committed assumption of the title role. Felicity Palmer sounds stern in comparison, and occasionali strained by the tessitura, though Hickox's instrumentalists and choir perform beautifully, and, unlike the Decca reissue, Hyperion provide the libretto.
The Cloud Messenger (1910), Holst's final Sanskrit work, builds more on the conventional style of King Esemere (his 1903 oratorio, recorded by Hilary Davan Wetton on Hyperion) rather than the unorthodox harmonies of the Rig Veda Hymns. Yet it is a potently memorable work, most haunting in its last few pages where - wit" virtually a capella choral writing of understated sensitivity - the cloud is imagined having arrived at the exiled poet's beloved to convey his message of love. Hickox and his forces' superlative performance does justice both to this and the more flamboyantly orchestrated pages, never embarrassed by even the most blatant pages of 'orientalism'.

Songs and shorter choral works
Until recently, Holst's earliest work on disc was his Ave Maria for female voices (1900). Imogen approved of its flowing counterpoint and pure triadic harmonies, and made a fine recording in 1966 with her Purcell Singers (on a midprice Double Decca). Her choir, though, sound rather matronly in the wake of clearer-voiced versions recorded by the Finzi Singers on Chandos and the aptly named Holst Singers (under Stephen Layton) on Hyperion.
The Holst Singers include some of music written for the regular Whitsun Festival (that is, held around the seventh Sunday after Easter, celebrating Pentecost) which Holst instigated in the village of Thaxted from 1916. By then he had encountered Thomas Morley's madrigals through Edmund Fellowes' edition of 1913; their contrapuntal and rhythmic liveliness infected some of his best music over the next 10 years. The Finzi Singers provide just one work from this period - the motet This have I done for my true love - but their technically secure performance, graced with a lovely soprano soloist, outclasses the Hoist Singers' which, unusually, is less than precise in following Hoist's rhythms (not helped either by an errant tenor who bawls at their final cadence, an offence he repeats at the final phrase of 'Swansea Town' from the Choral Folk Songs).
One of Holst's most hauntingly affecting works, the Four Songs for Voice and Violin (1916-17), was inspired by his encountering one of his students wandering inside Thaxted Church, playing her violin and singing to herself. Susan Gritton's impassioned and beautiful rendition of these succinct yet extraordinarily expressive settings of medieval lyrics is part of the Collins Classics collection of Hoist songs, and will alone be worth the asking price when reissued by Naxos in September.
On their earlier all-Holst CD, the Hoist Singers, conducted by Davan Wetton, give strong accounts of later works. In 'The Evening Watch', the first of Two Motets (1924-25), they realise its resonant harmonies to spellbinding effect. The Finzi Singers also offer well-focused singing, but an intimate acoustic robs them of any sense of unfolding mystery. However, unlike the Holst Singers, they include the even more eventful 'Sing me the men'. Starting with a gravely modal melody, this motet becomes increasingly polyphonic until the women's voices seem to fountain ecstatically upwards. Possibly its technical challenges and obscure text have militated against its popularity, though the Finzi Singers are strong advocates of this underestimated piece.
The Seven Part Songs (1925-26) for female voices and strings, setting poems by Bridges, present a more relaxed lyricism. Their chaste beauty suits the pure-toned Hoist Singers far better than the over-ripe voices of Imogen Holst's Purcell Singers (on Decca).
Almost complementary, though more consistently sombre, are the Six Choruses for male voices and strings (1931-32). The Holst Singers present a virtually complete performance, though one chorus, 'How mighty are the Sabbaths', is adapted from the original version for full orchestra, omitting the brass and woodwind parts but including the ad lib treble chorus. The only current alternative, by the richer-toned Baccholian Singers of London, omits this chorus altogether: the budget price Classics for Pleasure reissue also includes the Dirge for Two Veterans (1914), but alas not their excellent performance of the rarely heard The Homecoming (1913), Holst's droll setting of Hardy's portrait of a newly married but ill-matched young couple.
Finally, mention should be made of the extraordinary collection of songs setting Humbert Wolfe poems (1929). Peter Pears' and Britten's superb recording of all 12 (on Argo) is shamefully unavailable. They have since been recorded (on Collins Classics, to be reissued on Naxos) by Philip Langridge, manifestly a fine artist though somewhat past his vocal peak. Steuart Bedford offers relatively pedestrian accompaniment compared to Britten's fluent and poetic playing. As the songs were first sung by Holst's favourite soprano, Dorothy Silk, it is interesting to hear Patrizia Kwella sing in an orchestral arrangement by Colin Matthews (Hyperion, coupled with Hickox's Savitri), which brings out the songs' beautiful and dreamy qualities, though rather at the expense of the more glinting moments in the piano original.

Opera and ballet
In terms of recordings and performances, Savitri remains Hoist's most successful opera. His next, The Perfect Fool (1918-22), has never been recorded save for its opening ballet music. Of Sir Adrian Boult's two recordings, the mono version (on Belart) is a touch more vividly characterised, but the stereo version is also exuberant and an obvious choice when coupled with other valuable recordings including Imogen Holst's Savitri.
The one-act At the Boar's Head (1924) is an unorthodox setting of episodes from Shakespeare's Henry IV using an almost continous patchwork of 35 traditional dance and folk tunes. One might hear the English folk music as pertinent musical subtexts; but even without knowing the folk tunes, one can hear the warmth with which Holst portrays Falstaff (sung with suitable dignity by John Tomlinson) and his friends, particularly the blend of sentiment and genuine love Doll Tearsheet (vividly characterised by Felicity Palmer) feels for Sir John.
A similar warmth pervades the fairytale world of Holst's first choral ballet, The Golden Goose (1926). His ability to bring out the very best from amateur forces is evident in the only complete recording, with the Guildford Choral Society (on Hyperion) heard to best advantage in a performance brimful with charm. They are less successful in the second choral ballet, The Morning of the Year, originally intended for the professional forces of the English Folk Dance Society. The Philharmonia's playing, however, mitigates the choir's shortcomings, and in both works there's an intriguing foretaste of the folksiness Copland was to mine so effectively in his ballets years later.
Holst's last opera is the short comedy, The Wandering Scholar (1929-30). This is winningly conducted by Steuart Bedford on EMI, with Norma Burrowes as a silvery-voiced and winsome Alison, the young wife all too eager to be seduced by 'dear fat Father Philippe' as sung - an inspired piece of casting - by Michael Langdon. For all the apparent obviousness of its humour, this is an opera that thrives on sympathetic portrayal and comic timing, qualities in short supply in Richard Hickox's remake for Chandos.

Orchestral works
David Atherton's invaluable collection of Holst's early orchestral works (on Lyrita) includes a full-blooded account of 'Elegy (In Memoriam William Morris)', an intense and powerfully noble essay in Hoist's Wagnerian style. This is taken from the Cotswolds Symphony (1899-1900), recorded entire - albeit with less polished orchestral playing - by Douglas Bostock on Classico; the Symphony also includes a very fine Scherzo, though its outer two movements are effectively 'sugarcoating' in the then approved Stanford/Parry symphonic style.
A Somerset Rhapsody (1906), Holst's first essay using English folk tunes, artfully weaves several into a powerful narrative tapestry - rather akin to Borodin's In the Steppes of Central Asia. Boult's spacious yet flowing narrative on Lyrita is very successful, while Lloyd-Jones's more recent Naxos recording creates telling contrasts between the airy openness of the preludial oboe d'amore theme (the 'Sheep Shearing Song') and the bustling forces of the recruiting army (represented by 'High Germany').
A Fugal Overture (1922), despite its forbidding title, is more notable for its dancing rhythms and buoyantly 'brass mood: Hoist recommended it as an appropriate curtain-raiser for his opera The Perfect Fool. Of the four recordings, the best are Boult's on Lyrita and Lloyd-Jones's on Naxos, who both find bouncy rhythms at the relatively steady tempi implied by the Moderato quasi Allegro marking.
Holst's mostly sotto voce portrayal of Hardy's Egdon Heath is one of his bleakest visions (only surpassed by 'Betelgeuse' in his Humbert Wolfe songs). Boult's premiere recording with his LPO remains peerless as an interpretation, though every subsequent version has greater precision in the tuning of the double basses' opening solo. Boult's phrasing is always convincing (unlike Previn's on EMI - the relative cleanness of his LSO basses' tuning appears to be at the expense of any phrasing at all); and, unlike other conductors (notably Andrew Davis on Teldec and Hickox on Chandos), Boult has the courage to follow Hoist's direction and keep the grave procession an unobtrusive piano and Andante Maestoso until told to do otherwise. That said, Lloyd-Jones's rather quicker speed for both the procession and the modal dance which precedes the final recapitulation works since his overall performance is at a less sluggish than usual tempo.
The Lyric Movement, composed towards the end of Hoist's life, is a rigorously constructed yet highly expressive autumnal poem for viola and small orchestra. Imogen Hoist's account with Cecil Aronowitz (Lyrita) is purposeful and flowing without sacrificing any of the work's ruminative lyricism, though the fairly closefocus recording rather irons out some of its subtle dynamic contrasts. Violist Rachel Bolt and Pople offer a similar concept at super-budget price (Arte Nova): unfortunately the boxy acoustic is even less satisfactory, and the programme - including orchestrations of Morris Dance Tunes played as if for middle-aged listening rather than for actual dancing - is hardly inspiring. The terribly slow tempi taken by Tees/Hickox (Chandos) and Pooley/Elder (Hyperion) makes the piece sound listlessly Out of steam by mid-point.
To confound any notion of final benediction, Holst's Scherzo, the only completed movement of a projected Symphony, is a richly peopled world, a kaleidoscope of fleeting colours and events, glittering one moment, mournful then playful the next. Hickox (Chandos), more than any other conductor, triumphantly opens this tantalising window onto what promised to be, but for his untimely death, one of Holst's greatest works.

Major choral works
It is now difficult to realise the sense of 'shock, then ... revelation' felt by the performers and audience at the first public performance of The Hymn of Jesus in 1920. But its use of freefloating plainchant, a treble choir well-separated from the main double choir, its stunning juxtaposition of unrelated harmonies together with old and new styles of music, and its exuberant central dance, were unprecedented in English choral music. Sir Malcolm Sargent's lifelong affection for this is evident from his lively premiere recording of 1944 (now on Dutton), though it suffers from a distinctly flat chorus. Boult's 1962 recording (Decca) remains a classic: the chorus's first full entry still thrills with its unexpected key change on 'Father', and Boult's tempi, while steadier than Sargent's, have an infectious bounce in the central dance. Far better than Sir Charles Groves's lacklustre recording is Hickox's clear-cut performance with the LSO and Chorus: unfortunately he seems determined to make the dance episode a prototype of Bernstein's Chichester Psalms, and though the hard-driven rhythms are initially effective one misses the sense of warmth and goodwill generated by Boult's performance. On the other hand, the superb orchestral playing and exemplary recording reveal details, such as the softly dissonant halo of strings around the oboe's Pange lingua chant, less evident in the Boult version.
If, as Holst scholar Raymond Head argues, the Hymn of Jesus was Holst's direct response to the anguish of the First World War, Ode to Death (1919), a memorial 'to Cecil Coles and the others', is its natural companion. All the more disappointing, then, that Hickox's London Symphony Chorus sound so out of sorts in their recording, the sopranos progressively flat through the opening pages. The same choir (trained by Hickox) rose magnificently to this poignant and beautiful work for Groves in 1976, and it is frustrating that EMI should have deleted this after its brief appearance on CD.
The London premiere of the Choral Symphony (1923-24), setting an idiosyncratic selection of Keats' poems, left its audience bemused and marked the end of Hoist's celebrity status. However, with our ears attuned to Stravinsky's music, we can now perhaps hear Holst's intentions more clearly: the stylised abandon of the Bacchanal, with its persistent bell-like fourths harmonies, recalls the Russian's Les noces (not yet performed in England, though it seems likely that Holst would have seen a vocal score through his critic friend Edwin Evans). And Sir Adrian Boult, a long-standing champion of the work, has demonstrated in his EMI recording the coherence of the once discursive-seeming finale, drawing it to its moving conclusion as the chorus quietly sneak in behind the soprano soloist (Felicity Palmer) with their big tune, 'Bards of Passion'.
Even less compromising in style is A Choral Fantasia, Holst's late meditation on the mortality of man versus the immortality of art. As in the Hymn of Jesus, Holst uses contrasting forces to dramatise the 'message' of the work, pitting grim-toned organ, brass and percussion against warmer toned strings. Hickox almost matches the cogency of Imogen Holst's pioneering recording (on EMI) - unlike Davan Wetton in his Hyperion recording - though he fatally rushes the crucial central apotheosis to the words 'Now ye are starry names'; in any case, his soloist, Patricia Rozario, is no match for Imogen Holst's Janet Baker, splendidly oracular at the opening, and movingly tender at the end.

[North Star]

Here's the Holst thread:
http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php?topic=431.0

[Scion7]

Hmmm ... using the forum search engine resulted in no such topic when I searched for "Composer Discussion" and "Holst."

[North Star]

Yeah, the search engine is crappy, I usually use some real search engine to search from the forum.
But for composers, there is the Composer Index, and under U you will find UK, and Holst.
http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,19229.msg558152.html#msg558152

[Scion7]

The forum search on "composer index" comes up zilch, also.

If the mods/owner want to move this thread they will.  But in future I will do a quick search and just post away - 50 pages of topics is too much to sort through by eyeballing it.

[North Star]

There's no harm in creating a new topic, it can always be merged with older ones. But the composer index is handy for finding these topics.

[Scion7]

Interesting comments from a MusicWeb review:

"Imogen, the composer's daughter and champion. Imogen, an underrated conductor, gave lively performances of Holst's work. She also edited many of the scores in order to secure for them a greater possibility of getting played. She reduced The Golden Goose, for example, a work requiring chorus, orchestra, dancers, and mummers, to its instrumental sections only. A canny manager of Holst's posthumous career and a shrewd observer of the modern-music scene, she also kept hidden much of Holst's early work, as part of a general strategy to show Holst as a rebel only, rather than as both heir and rebel. In her own study of her father's work, she continually stressed the prophetic, progressive elements in the music and failed to even mention many works. Only late in life did she open up the trunk."

[Scion7]

The Perfect Fool (opera and ballet), Op.39

Hmmmm ... giving this a listen on YT.  I may have to seek out a recording of this - a bit of a Magic Flute feeling in the story.

Those who don't care for opera may enjoy the ballet music of the opening.

[Scion7]

                                       BBC 4 Documentary on Gustav Holst

As usual, the government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland have seen fit to block me from watching BBC 4 on the 'net.

While this is tantamount to an act of war, I don't have the ability for a trans-Atlantic ballistic missile attack .... yet.

Anyone in here seen it?  It's listed as 2hrs 20mins ...