Gustav HOLST
Works for Chorus and Orchestra
The Golden Goose, A Choral Ballet
The Morning of the Year, A Choral Ballet
King Estmere, An Old English Ballad for Chorus and Orchestra
Morgan (soprano), Beinart
(alto), Ovenden (tenor)
Guildford Choral Society, The Philharmonia Orchestra/Hilary Davan Wetton
Hyperion CDA66784 Total
time: 72:10
(This recording was released in 1995)
Crotchet
Amazon
UK
Amazon
USA
Mention Holst's name and, if the penny drops into the slot at all, the little
memory-ticket that comes out will be The Planets. Holst has become a
one-hit-wonder of the classical world, a shame since his catalogue is stuffed
with great work, in many ways more interesting than the success which happened
to last.
This CD, although it makes no claims, I believe consists of all premieres:
the early King Estmere and the complete versions of The Golden Goose and
The Morning of the Year. Lyrita recorded excerpts from the latter two as
part of its marvelous Holst series, spearheaded by 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. Thanks to this decision, we now have recordings of such works
as The Mystic Trumpeter, The Cloud Messenger, and King Estmere.
However, Imogen's presentation of her father distorted his career. The Planets,
for example, seems to come from nowhere, rather than from Holst's dogged
determination over a period of years to find himself and to improve his
technique. The latter was especially important to him. He advised his friend
Vaughan Williams to write the pieces which would enable him to write better
pieces later on. VW strongly disagreed. For Holst, technique cleared a path
to personal expression. For VW, technique was never as important as the
expression. Vaughan Williams could afford to subordinate technique's importance,
since he had far more of it in his early works than Holst did. On the other
hand, Vaughan Williams could afford to study in Germany and France, while
Holst had to hustle just to make ends meet. Holst almost never had the time
for composition that his friend did. Caught in his personal artistic maze,
Holst writes operas, suites, chamber pieces, short orchestral squibs, even
most of a symphony, to break through to himself. There's a huge amount of
work that means aesthetically very little in itself, if we consider his mature
output, but he needed to get it done. A drawing instructor once remarked
to his students that they each had to do at least 100,000 bad drawings to
become any good. Holst "did his stodge" and found his reward. He begins,
in my opinion, to hit the right road around 1907-1908 with the Two Carols
for choir, oboe, and cello and from then on goes from strength to strength.
The Planets rests on a mountain of sheer hard work.
King Estmere comes from 1905 and shows us the following. Holst has mastered
large, complex forces. His choice of text (from Bishop Percy's Reliques of
Ancient English Poetry) - I would suspect particularly the ballad rhythms
of the text - leads him to adopt an idiom influenced by the modes of English
folk song. The use of the ballad form (the same music for each stanza) could
easily have degenerated into mere repetition, but Holst knows how to subtly
stray from and, just as subtly, to return to the main material, much as Britten
does in the later Ballad of Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard. In addition
to the quasi-folk idiom, one finds bits of Parry, Stanford, and even Sullivan's
Yeoman of the Guard. It's a choral piece from someone apparently untouched
by the greater musical and psychological complexity of Elgar's oratorios.
We also see Holst resorting to the model of Wagner's Goetterdaemmerung whenever
he needs a broad climax. If we didn't have The Hymn of Jesus or the other
two works on this program, the work would satisfy in itself. However, Holst's
main appeal, at least to me, is the originality of his mature idiom, still
buried beneath derivative clutter.
On the other hand, Holst wrote The Golden Goose and The Morning of the Year,
according to Imogen's Thematic Catalogue of Gustav Holst's Music, consecutively,
from 1926 to 1927, well into his artistic maturity. Holst called both works
"choral ballets," a term which seems to have derived from the madrigal ballets
of the Renaissance and which Bantock seems to have revived for his Great
God Pan, around 1917. I suspect Holst more influenced by the Elizabethans
than by Bantock. Despite the identity of term and forces, the two Holst works
aim at different things. Holst intended The Golden Goose for amateurs. Indeed,
the first performance was given with the students of Morley College and St.
Paul's Girls' School (Holst taught at both). The libretto - a fairy tale
about the princess who never laughed - was devised by Jane M. Joseph, whom
Holst considered his most promising pupil and who died very young. Holst
also made several versions of the piece, including one for children and one
consisting solely of instrumental numbers. As befits a work for amateurs,
Holst comes up with dazzling tunes, nevertheless simple to sing. The hard
work falls to the orchestra, but even here Holst simplifies. Holst's maturity
is marked by a concern for a kind of mathematical elegance - that is, as
few notes as possible and each note used to maximum effect - so the kind
of simplification in The Golden Goose doesn't really mean compromise. Holst
also emphasizes counterpoint at this time - in this work, mostly two-part
counterpoint. The lines fit together like the sides of a well-made box, all
the more amazing since if you consider each line separately, you'd likely
conclude that it wouldn't go with its partner. This leads to great independence
of each idea, emphasized by Holst's clear scoring.
The Morning of the Year, on the other hand, holds the honor of the first
work commissioned by the BBC. It is designed for professionals. The counterpoint
is far more complex, a greater number of lines, and Holst increases the
complexity by writing in at least two keys at once and in mixed meters, both
of which increase the independence of simultaneously-stated themes. Holst
borrows ideas from his earlier Hymn of Jesus and Fugal Concerto, neither
of them particularly easy. Holst conceived of the work as a kind of masque
on the English rites of spring, with singers, dancers, and instrumentalists.
The text concerns nature's recurring rebirth, mirrored in human pairing
and courtship. The energy of the piece lies not, as with Stravinsky's Russian
rites, in barbarism and human sacrifice, but in the deep wells of nature's
vitality. Holst's "characters" are peasants, not primitives. The Morning
of the Year may have a marginally less appealing surface than The Golden
Goose, but it also holds you more strongly.
The performance is okay, with the orchestra outclassing the singers. The
Guildford Choral Society comes across as an amateur community group, with
extremely weak sopranos. Intonation is a little shakey, particularly from
the sopranos, who sing under pitch (almost the right note, but not quite)
almost all the time, but there's no outright disaster. The orchestra, on
the other hand, gives the performances their zip. If Wetton had a better
chorus and soloists, this would have been an outstanding CD. As it is, it's
pretty good and, as I say, the only recording of two splendid works.
If you like Holst at all, give this a try. The sound is fine.
Steve Schwartz
[This is a guest reviewer. Steve can be contacted on
sschwa@bellsouth.net
]
