Not everything that
composers write is of equal interest
to listeners. Inevitably pieces crop
up which are more interesting for the
light they shed on the composer’s career
rather than for any innately musical
reasons. Even a composer as fastidious
as Gustav Holst left a number of works
behind which lack the spark which ignites
his best. As a composer, performer and
teacher Holst wrote quite a bit of music
to be performed by amateurs, some of
it for teaching purposes at St. Paul’s
Girls School where he taught.
This new disc from
conductor Jon Ceander Mitchell brings
together a number of Holst’s smaller
occasional works, written either for
teaching or for one-off events. The
music included consists of the incidental
music Holst wrote for a 1905 performance
of Ben Jonson’s masque, Pan’s Anniversary;
the incidental music for the 1921 Pageant
of St. Martin in the Fields and
a series of suites taken from Purcell’s
music, arrangements made for St. Paul’s
Girls School.
The disc opens with
Greeting, a work which occurs
in a variety of forms. Written in 1904,
it was originally for violin and piano
but here given in its orchestral guise.
The piece is fluent and effective but
its main interest is to give us a glimpse
of the early, Wagner-oriented Holst,
prior to his involvement in English
folk song.
This move towards folk
song came about through Holst’s friendship
with Ralph Vaughan Williams. The two
had met at the Royal College of Music
and continued in close partnership until
Holst’s death. They showed each other
nearly all their work and freely commented
on it.
Vaughan Williams was
engaged to write music for the Royal
Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford. One
of the commissions was for Ben Jonson’s
Pan’s Anniversary or the Shepherd’s
Holyday a masque originally written
in 1620. Vaughan Williams wrote the
hymns and some of the incidental music
whilst giving Holst the dances and some
of the folk songs. Despite their closeness,
this was a rare occasion when they collaborated
on a job.
Holst’s music consists
of arrangements of 16th century
dances, Sellinger's Round and the folk
songs ‘The Lost Lady Found’, ‘Maria
Martin’ and ‘All on Spurn Point’ – the
latter two collected by Vaughan Williams.
The music is orchestrated effectively
for chamber orchestra, but never succeeds
in being greater than the sum of its
parts. At times the music raises echoes
of Vaughan Williams’s Folk Song Suite.
The 'The Lost Lady Found' rather pales
when compared to Percy Grainger’s arrangement.
The incidental music
to The Pageant of St. Martin in the
Fields was written in 1921, after
Holst’s success with The Planets
and The Hymn of Jesus. The pageant
was the brainchild of the parish priest,
Dick Sheppard, someone whom Holst admired,
hence his involvement in the project.
Holst not only composed and conducted
the music, but supplied the musicians,
mainly students and friends. The most
striking movement is the opening ‘Funeral
March’ which marks itself as being mature
Holst. The other movements recycle material
Holst had used before, notably ‘The
Entry of the Masquers’ from Pan’s
Anniversary, now seen in a far more
sophisticated guise.
These pieces are of
some interest and the Pageant
provides the opportunity to hear some
mature Holst. It is a shame that the
recordings were not coupled to some
other rarities from his mature period.
Instead, the remainder
of the disc consists of four suites
of music from Purcell. Holst took the
Purcell Society scores, removed the
piano part and added wind parts. By
and large his arrangements are quite
conservative and provide effective ways
of playing Purcell’s music with a reasonable
sized chamber orchestra.
For the performances,
Jon Ceander Mitchell has sensibly made
no attempt to reconstruct the style
of performance of Purcell’s time, instead
opting for the sort of forces and style
of performance that Holst would have
expected. The results are effective
and attractive but undeniably not in
period style. They have a charm of their
own, evoking a style of performance
which has by and large disappeared.
Mitchell and the Philharmonia
Bulgarica make the best case possible
for these pieces. Their performances
are lively and attractive, but the pieces
themselves are of limited interested.
Frankly I suspect that this disc is
for Holst completists only.
Robert Hugill
for details
Philharmonia Bulgarica/Jon Ceander Mitchell
