Gustav HOLST (1874-1934)
Cotswolds Symphony (1902) [23.11]
A Winter Idyll (1897) [9.01]
Walt Whitman Overture (1899) [7.21]
Indra (1903) [15.46]
Japanese Suite (1915) [10.17]
Ulster Orchestra/JoAnn Falletta
rec. Ulster Hall, Belfast, 11-12 October 2011
NAXOS 8.572914 [65.55]
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), and the Walt Whitman Overture and complete Cotswolds
Symphony by Douglas Bostock even more recently. 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
Reviews on Holst recordings on Naxos
Some really worthwhile and rewarding music. I wish this disc all possible success.