Holst: Beni Mora / Somerset Rhapsody / Hammersmith

Description

Gustav Holst (1874-1934) Somerset RhapsodyBeni MoraInvocation for Cello and OrchestraFugal OvertureEgdon HeathHammersmithLooking back over the twentieth centuryone might wonder how Gustav Holst came to be such a seminal figure in Britishmusic on the basis of so few familiar works. Today's casual concert-goer orrecord-buyer would be challenged to name three or four of his compositions. Infact he wrote several hundred in practically every genre. Singers will knowpart-songs and wind-players the military-band suites, but his modern reputationrests on The Planets, The Hymn of Jesus, and perhaps the ballet music toThe Perfect Fool. These few pieces not only underpin Holst's presentposition but were all written in the surprisingly short period when hereceived, or in his view endured, popular approval. The Planets wasfirst performed in 1918, The Hymn of Jesus in 1920 and The PerfectFool in 1922. Outside this period of public favour things were different:hitherto he was young, up and coming, needing to feed himself, find his ownvoice and make it heard; afterwards, being the personality he was, the price offorging ahead was to leave the public and the musical establishment behind.This caused Holst no heartache at all for there was little chance that criticalendorsement would ever compromise his artistic tenets.This recording neatly covers inchronological order these outer two periods (three pieces from each of them),revealing some clues as to why Holst was so central to English music of the earlytwentieth century. In this one man's music can be traced all those musicalcurrents which fed and energised the musical renaissance in England at thattime. A man who never stood still, who was driven to experiment, who needed nocheering from the touchline, a man with his mind open to the musical revolutionthat was under way in Europe but in whose ears still rang the modal inflexionsof folk-song, the rhythmic freedom of plainsong and the exhilaratingcounterpoint of the Tudor age.The Somerset Rhapsody (1906-7) waswritten at the suggestion of the great folk-song collector Cecil Sharp and wasHolst's first real critical success. Had he then decided to climb aboard theEnglish pastoralists' hay-wagon he might well have shared the nowwell-composted reputation of that school, but already there were signs of whereHolst would be going: those repeated scalic bass lines, the risingtrumpet-calls and his love affair with contrapuntal ingenuities. Yet there arebackward glances to what his daughter Imogen calls his 'early horrors'; somerather trite thematic development and residual patches of overripe Wagnerianharmony. He quotes four different songs: his own acknowledged favourite the SheepShearing Song, High Germany, The True Lover's Farewell and The Cuckoo, allpresented in full at least once but overlaying each other to varying degrees ina tight musical structure.Beni Mora (1909-10) or Oriental Suite could, like the Somerset Rhapsody, conveyin its title the suggestion of diversion