MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


CD REVIEW

Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger

alternatively
CD: AmazonUK AmazonUS
Download: Classicsonline

 

Gustav HOLST (1874-1934)
Orchestral Works - Vol. 1
The Ballet from ‘The Perfect Fool’ (1918-22) [11:32]
The Golden Goose - a choral ballet (1926) [24:50]
The Lure – ballet music (1921) [10:15]
The Morning of the Year - a choral ballet (1926-27) [21:02]
Joyful Company of Singers/Peter Broadbent
BBC National Orchestra of Wales/Richard Hickox
rec. 1-2 July 2008, Brangwyn Hall, Swansea. DSD
CHANDOS CHSA5069 [67:42]
Experience Classicsonline


With the death of Richard Hickox this disc will be the only volume in the intended Chandos Holst series unless another conductor takes over. This utterly splendid disc makes Richard’s passing all the more lamentable. It is in fact the finest Holst disc in years. Otherwise one needs to look back to the Lyrita recordings on SRCD 222 (Boult), 223 (Imogen Holst) and 209 (David Atherton) for anything anywhere near as good. Also don’t forget the essential Decca collection. Sadly there is no sign as yet of recordings of his complete operas: Sita and The Perfect Fool.

The Ballet music from The Perfect Fool comprises elemental dances from the opera which itself runs to about 75-80 minutes – ideal for a CD project. Chandos provide a deeply pleasing and vivacious recording – one of their very best. It delivers a palette of detailing stimulatingly placed across the aural span. The brass are imperiously emphatic and the more feline touches - such as the soft and cool flute playing - are rendered with touching expression. If you already enjoy Dukas’s L’Apprenti Sorcier or Chabrier’s España or Holst’s The Planets then this is something you must get to know. The classic Decca Boult recording of the ballet music is brilliant but was made in the 1960s. Hickox’s is every bit its equal but basks in contemporary sound. Never mind that the full fairytale opera with its complement of wizards, narcoleptic fools, princesses and elemental spirits pokes fun at Verdi and Wagner clichés; these bejewelled dances are immensely enjoyable in their own right. By the way, the opera itself is lots of fun as those who heard the Groves (1972) and Handley (Christmas Day, 1995) broadcasts will attest. In terms of character you might bracket it with RVW’s Poisoned Kiss­: entertaining, brilliant and touching.

In practice The Perfect Fool dances are the most familiar pieces here. The other scores are largely unknown. The two choral ballets are new to CD (see footnote). If you recall a recording of The Golden Goose it’s Imogen Holst’s version minus chorus on SRCD 223. Also sans chorus is The Morning of the Year dances on SRCD 209 – the same disc includes the ballet music from The Lure. The Golden Goose score is in seven  tracks. It’s a score in which Holst’s folk-song manner is present as it is in his Somerset Rhapsody – see Boult-Holst Lyrita disc. This is not the end of the story because other streams flow in including a Tippett-like delicacy (near the start), a proud bluff manner: part RVW and part de Falla’s Tricorne and a wassailing beguilement. The singing is precise yet springy and wonderfully attentive to dynamics and word-shaping. There’s also a ready sense of humour evident – how about the refrain: “I shan’t get home in time to make my old man’s dinner tonight!” It’s not all broad humour though – listen to the Neptune-ethereal singing at 3:44 on tr. 6. At tr. 9 the voice of the solo violin rises in a pristine dancing delicacy – which reminded me a little of Holst’s ascetic Four Songs for voice and violin (1916). The Lure is memorable for the satisfying shark-skin abrasion of the strangely Hispanic brass playing, its music-box grace (4:40) and a gorgeously Rimskian swell (5:40). The xylophone punctuation in the more exuberant brass recalled similar effects in Hanson’s first two symphonies and Lament for Beowulf. Finally The Morning of the Year brings us back to the choir and orchestra. This is a somewhat lower key score but has its charms. Its folkdance feeling is consistent with the dedication - which is to the English Folk Dance Society. In this sense it recalls one of RVW’s few unrecorded scores: the large-scale Folk Songs of the Four Seasons written for a Women’s Institute extravaganza in the 1950s and rarely heard since. Holst is a degree more nuanced and mystical. In the penultimate segment the slowly accelerating swing of voices and orchestra into dance suggests that William Mathias knew the score before writing his This Worldes’s Joie. This mood can be contrasted with the asceticism of tr. 14 with its echoes of Betelgeuse from Holst’s Humbert Wolfe Songs and the pantheistic mysteries of The Hymn of Jesus recalled in the first segment of the ballet.

I listened to this in conventional CD mode but those who have SACD are in for an even more intense experience.

Richard Hickox died in the middle of a sequence of sessions to record Holst’s A Choral Symphony – a sequence of Keats-settings.

The listening experience of this disc is completed in princely style with full texts reproduced in the booklet. There’s also an attentive and authoritative note by Colin Matthews who has worked on many Holst scores including several used here.

Rob Barnett

Footnote
I am grateful to Colin Mackie for pointing out my mistake in claiming that this is the first time that 'The Golden Goose' and 'The Morning of the Year' have appeared on disc. Hyperion released a CD with these two Choral Ballets coupled with 'King Estmere'(An Old English Ballad for Chorus and Orchestra) recorded in 1995 with the Guildford Choral Society and the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Hilary Davan Wetton(CDA66784)(nla). RB  




 


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Chandos recordings
All Chandos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools




Return to Review Index

Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.