Handley knows The
Planets so well. This is evident
even amid the myriad great and good
who have recorded the work. Handley’s
is a version that was well worth rescuing
from Room 101 as Regis/Alto have done
with other Tring originals. The refusal
of players and conductor in 1993 to
allow this to become an autopilot event
is evident. Their dedication is aided
by the recording which recalls full-blooded
Decca standards of the early 1970s.
Even quiet passages are given enough
of a balance-nudge to bring them to
the fore. This occasionally militates
against the more mystical-spiritual
writing especially in Neptune where
the Ambrosians seems pretty close. Normally
you might equate Neptune with
the last of the Humbert Wolfe songs,
the otherworldly Betelgeuse;
not this time. That said, the real excesses
of spotlighting are avoided. Right from
the start the listener knows he is on
to a good thing even if deep-down traffic
rumbles add a tactful counterpoint in
a few discreet passages. In Mars
the quietly seething tam-tam passages
are just masterly – like an evocation
of the breath of some malign presence.
The blackness of violent despair is
unmistakably conveyed by the intentionally
awful growling chords that end the movement.
Venus is given a thoughtful rather
than sensuous reading which convinced
me that previously I had only ever overheard
it. Both in Mars and Venus
I realised how much Bax had been
affected by The Planets in his
Second Symphony which dates from the
early 1920s. In Venus the lapidary
scoring also recalls Delius at his most
ecstatic. Jupiter is sturdy rather
than overwhelming; if you want more
then turn to Previn (EMI) who lets go
where Handley holds it in, tightly buttoned.
Holst himself had learnt much from study
of Rimsky’s Sheherazade (1:43)
never mind Dukas’s L’Apprenti Sorcier
which can be heard elsewhere; not just
in Uranus. The magnificent recording
by Floating Earth is further affirmed
in Saturn by the march at 1.50
forwards with the sonorous footfall
of the basses recalling RVW’s Dona
Nobis Pacem and Holst’s own spare
setting of Whitman’s Dirge for Two
Veterans. As that march becomes
heavy with dread so the speakers fill
the room with a wall of sound and deathly
tolling. Even so, where the Boult (1979)
and Previn (1974) make much of the horror-struck
and panic-ridden climax of Saturn
Handley pulls back. In this reading
Uranus must, both in its syncopated
exuberance and occasionally in its jaunty-macabre,
have inspired Constant Lambert in his
Horoscope and in Summer’s
Last Will. The determined loose-limbed
march at 3:05 is predictive of Bliss’s
film score march for Things to Come.
This is a version of
The Planets that is ablaze with
character and should not be missed.
Speaking of which I hope that some company
will also pick up the original tapes
of another almost lost Planets,
this time by that stirringly imaginative
yet neglected conductor, George Hurst.
Hurst was, for years, a mainstay with
the Bournemouth Symphony. He recorded
the Holst suite with them and the Bournemouth
Municipal Choir in Southampton Guildhall
in 1974. It was issued on the budget
Contour label as 2870-367
and then sank from view. No doubt it
has been hampered by its analogue heritage
but it was a very fine recording and
interpretation which deserves revival
every bit as much as Handley’s Planets.
I lost track of the LP years ago but
perhaps someone out there has it and
a CD recorder? I would love to hear
it again and I am sure many others would
too.
As for the other two
works, Handley’s St Paul’s Suite
is a precise and sanguine ‘big band’
reading with ‘big band’ sound: plenty
of visceral excitement. This is definitely
for you if you find Imogen Holst and
the ECO on Lyrita too dainty. The viola
solo in the Intermezzo reaches
forward to Holst’s Lyric Movement
for viola and orchestra. There is also
a dash or two of the North African exoticism
(00.52) that may be more familiar from
his magnificent Beni Mora suite.
The Dargason finale makes joyous
play with counterpoint that is so redolent
of Frank Bridge’s Roger de Coverley.
This performance positively hums with
the sort of power that drove Norman
Del Mar’s 1960s recording of the RVW
Concerto Grosso with the Bournemouth
Symphony (EMI Classics CDM 5 65130 2).
Barry Wordsworth’s fine Brook Green
is cut from similar cloth but here
is done with great tenderness. The recording
is warmer if more generalised and not
as bitingly clear as the Tring original.
An extremely fine Holst
disc, then. Handley’s Planets ablaze
with character and grippingly recorded,
a robust St Paul’s and all generously
coupled with Wordsworth’s Brook Green.
Rob Barnett
Ambrosian Singers/John McCarthy 
