Imogen Holst has a great deal to answer for. She adored her
father and after his death wrote two books about him, one a
biography and the other a book on his music. The latter was
published in 1950 and did untold damage to the reputation of
his earlier music up to and including The Planets. As
a fervent disciple of Benjamin Britten, she looked in her father’s
music for signs of ‘modernist’ trends that would
lead to the renaissance of British music, as she saw it, in
the works of Britten and the post-Second World War generation
of British composers. Works that did not show such signs she
relegated to the category of failures, and that included nearly
all his early music including four of the five pieces included
on this enterprising disc. She talks of “his apprenticeship”
as “long and painful”, but there is no sign of pain
in any of this music. She describes the Walt Whitman
Overture as “an attempt to convey what Whitman’s
poetry had meant to him, but his intentions were wrecked by
wallowing. It is a thick and brassy work, its voluptuous chords
moving chromatically outwards with marcato deliberation.”
In fact what we hear here is a delightfully upbeat reaction
to the outdoor aspect of Whitman. Although it is clearly an
early piece with no obvious signs of what we now would regard
as characteristic Holst, it is at least as good a piece as Elgar’s
early Froissart and technically a good deal better than
the kind of music that Vaughan Williams was writing at the time
- and which has also recently been triumphantly revived and
vindicated.
She describes the Cotswolds Symphony as having “nothing
to build upon except the imitation Tudor heartiness of Edward
German.” Now that we know German’s music better,
we can see that there was a great deal more to him than
mock-Tudor pastiche; but the description does the symphony no
favours either. It is a magnificent piece, not profound perhaps,
but full of joie de vivre and showing an expert command
of the orchestra which was to remain with Holst all his life.
And the slow movement, an elegy in memory of William Morris,
which even Imogen Holst admits has “moments”, is
a heartfelt tribute to a figure whom we nowadays remember principally
as an artist and designer but whom Holst also respected as a
social reformer. It is typical that his daughter selects for
comment the appearance here of the phrase senza espress
which she sees as “the beginning of a line of thought
that was to lead him through the ‘dead’ pp
of Neptune to the mysterious monotony of Egdon
Heath.” She regards Egdon Heath as one of the
greatest of her father’s works, but there is nothing of
that ‘monotony’ -an odd choice of word - anywhere
in the Cotswolds Symphony whose music is never other
than totally life-affirming.
Regarding the Winter Idyll, which she includes in the
category her father called his ‘early horrors,’
Imogen Holst says that it makes “doleful reading”
and describes the music as “borrowed from Grieg”.
Again, one could hardly imagine a more inaccurate description;
there is almost nothing in Grieg - except possibly some of the
passages from the unfinished opera Olav Trygvason - that
has the same forcefulness as Holst demonstrates here. It is
not idyllic music, that is true, if one imagines ‘idyll’
to imply a Delius-like meditation on nature. Instead we have
a depiction of winter in all its facets, outdoor games and all.
Although it is an earlier work than anything else on this disc,
there are hints here of the future Holst style including a beautiful
unaccompanied cor anglais solo.
Indra was the first work that Holst wrote after falling
under the influence of his studies of Sanskrit literature. The
music here immediately sounds much more redolent of the composer
as he was to develop, although Imogen Holst sourly observes
that “there is very little trace of a newly discovered
world of thought in this particular manifestation of the god
or rain and storm.” All right, the opening is rather Wagnerian
in tone, but there is an excitement and assurance to the writing
that goes a great deal further than mere imitation. Soon (2.58)
we hear a passage in parallel thirds on the woodwind which anticipates
a similar episode in Venus which returns even more memorably
at 12.30.
The Japanese Suite is a much later work, written indeed
at the same time as The Planets, but Imogen Holst had
very little good to say about this either: “most of it
is disappointing”. In fact it is absolutely gorgeous music,
as we discovered when Sir Adrian Boult recorded it for a 1971
Lyrita LP compilation, with the opening Song of the fisherman
a most beautiful melody - it is not clear how genuinely Japanese
the tunes actually are. Imogen Holst in her briefly dismissive
description does not even mention this passage. The orchestration
throughout is delightful, with just a dusting of orientalism
to leaven the mix. Boult’s recording brought more passionate
string playing to the Song of the fisherman, but Falletta
points up the many orchestral felicities with greater point,
helped by a rather clearer recorded sound.
What made Imogen Holst’s book so damaging - and it is
worth plugging away at its faults - she made no substantial
revisions when the second edition cited here was published in
1968, although a third edition was published posthumously in
1986 - was the fact that when it was originally written all
these works except the Japanese Suite remained unpublished
and in manuscript, so there was no prospect of anybody being
able to look at the scores and decide whether she was right
or wrong in her dismissal of them. However towards the end of
her life, and more so since her death in 1984, the music has
slowly been creeping back into the light of day. In fact all
of the works on this disc have been recorded before - the Japanese
Suite by Boult, the Winter Idyll and Indra
by David Atherton in 1993 (all now re-released on Lyrita - see
review),
and the Walt Whitman Overture and complete Cotswolds
Symphony by Douglas Bostock even more recently (see review).
It has to be said that all of these earlier releases are at
least equalled if not surpassed by these superlative performances
under Falletta, who makes it clear that she is certain that
this music needs absolutely no apology to be made for it. The
orchestral playing is better than in the Bostock recordings
made in Munich, extremely valuable as those were; Bostock is
considerably slower in the symphony. Falletta has a more sympathetic
touch than Atherton. I would not be without Boult’s reading
of the Japanese Suite - now in its reissue coupled with
Boult’s superlative other recordings of Holst for Lyrita
- but this is the only point at which this superb disc need
fear any challenge.
There is still far too much Holst that remains unavailable,
which is an unforgivable slight on the reputation of one of
Britain’s major composers. The BBC broadcast a complete
performance of the genuinely funny opera The Perfect Fool
under Vernon Handley in 1995 with a nearly ideal cast, but this
performance remains unreleased - although it can be heard on
the internet - and we still await a commercial recording of
this major work. We have only ever had two brief excerpts from
the grand opera Sita, written during the years when Holst’s
genius was reaching its maturity. Hilary Davan Wetton put us
in his debt by recording the complete Golden Goose and
The morning of the year some fifteen years ago, but these
seem to be no longer available. There are no currently available
recordings either of the complete Welsh folksong arrangements
- there was once a briefly available LP - which Holst made towards
the end of his life, although they are marvels of re-imagination
of the traditional melodies. We have never had an absolutely
complete recording of the Choral Hymns from the Rig Veda:
Willcocks - also no longer available - omitted some of the best
movements, such as the male-voice Hymn to Agni. The magnificent
Hecuba’s lament is also needed. This is to ignore
the unpublished works. Such a situation is an absolute disgrace
which record companies should address urgently - and never mind
the brickbats cast at the music by the composer’s daughter.
In the meantime, we should be most grateful for this superb
compilation which, I hope, will introduce purchasers to some
really worthwhile and rewarding music. I wish it all possible
success.
Paul Corfield Godfrey
Holst review
index
Reviews
on Holst recordings on Naxos
Ulster Orchestra/JoAnn Falletta 