At the time of the first performance of The Planets,
Holst was suffering severely from the neuritis in his hands
which plagued him all his life. Much of the actual writing out
of the massive score had to be undertaken by his pupils at St
Paul’s School under the composer’s supervision. As a result
the score presented a considerable number of problems for performers
because of missing dynamic markings although it is invariably
clear what these should be. The score was newly edited by Colin
Matthews and Imogen Holst in 1979 to supply these and to correct
various other misprints in earlier editions. Even so The
Planets is not a work that could ever be easy to play.
It presents many problems not only of technique but also of
balance to inexperienced players. One of these occurs almost
immediately in Mars where Holst introduces a solo for
the “tenor tuba” which is usually nowadays played on the euphonium.
I suspect this to be a mistake; the euphonium, a brass band
instrument approximating in that medium to the cello, is rather
too soft-edged to make the right sort of impact. Karajan in
his 1960
Vienna recording employed a tenor “Wagner tuba” which produced
a more incisive effect but stood out from the orchestral balance
uncomfortably at other points in the score; I do not know what
instrument William Boughton uses here, but it sounds sharper-edged
than a euphonium and is pretty well ideal. I suspect however
that it may have been assisted by microphone placement, since
later in the movement it recedes into the orchestral mix. Its
duet with the trumpet towards the end (at 4.59) does not sound
ideally matched. Also rather backwardly balanced is the Albert
Hall organ which does not assert itself through the texture
in the same way as in the superbly engineered and ideally balanced
recording Charles Dutoit made in Montreal for Decca. Better
that, I suppose, than the horribly electronic effect which Karajan
achieved in his later Berlin recording for DG; considerably
toned down in later re-masterings.
Boughton’s speed for Mars is nicely judged, not too
hectic but with plenty of power; and one can for once clearly
hear the col legno strings tapping away in the opening
bars. This is a work which the Philharmonia could play in their
sleep, and the technical difficulties pose no problems for them.
The opening of Venus restores calm, with a poised horn
solo provoking a dreamy response from the woodwind, and Bradley
Cresswick produces a beautifully recessed violin solo at 2.08.
This is indeed Venus as “the bringer of peace” and not the erotic
goddess of love with which we are all too often presented. Perhaps
the celesta at 7.50 could be more clearly audible and defined,
but it is marked pianissimo in the score, and better
that than an over-amplified sound. The same instrument comes
through nicely in Mercury¸ which is taken at a steady
speed which enables plenty of detail to be heard. Then again
at 1.15 where its part is marked “solo” in the score, it does
not balance either the flute which precedes it with the melody
or the clarinet which follows. Here is a case where some discreet
spotlighting really is needed. There is one passage at 2.34
(returning later) which never really comes off in performance
– the strings and woodwind who have been playing a two-beat
rhythm in 6/8 are suddenly instructed for two bars to play with
a three-beat rhythm, indicated by forte accents. At
Holst’s Vivace marking it is extremely difficult for
the players to make this distinction clear, and the performance
here succeeds no better than any others that I have heard.
Jupiter bustles along with plenty of jollity, but Boughton
does not observe the ritenuto at 1.34 which Holst indicates
as leading into the molto pesante tune on the horns
– no more than do many of his rivals, including Sir Adrian Boult
who gave the first performance. Oddly enough when this passage
returns later on, Holst omits the ritenuto marking,
and since the passages are otherwise identical one wonders whether
the first marking might be a simple error which has remained
uncorrected. Boughton treats the central ‘big tune’ as a country
dance and not as a patriotic hymn, which is quite correct, but
properly allows a slight broadening towards the end of the passage
which is marked maestoso. When the tune occurs at the
very end Holst indicates that a single crochet of the new speed
should be the equivalent of a full bar of the previous one;
Boughton observes this precisely, but many conductors make a
further broadening to match Holst’s new tempo marking Lento
maestoso – I think this is probably needed to give the
‘big tune’ is full breadth, but what Boughton does here is
what Holst indicates.
The opening of Saturn is nicely poised, and for once
the low bass oboe solo at 1.24 is properly piano as
marked – it must be very difficult to achieve this dynamic level
in the extreme low register of the instrument, and the Philharmonia
player here does better than Dutoit’s rather more fruity oboist
in Montreal. As the music rises to a climax, Holst marks the
score Animato and indicates that the bells should be
played “with metal striker”. In a footnote to the new edition
of the score the player is advised to use a rawhide mallet “to
avoid damaging the bells”. This is what we are given here although
the sound is clearly not what the composer had in mind. Many
conductors turn the Animato into a violent acceleration
- Holst gives no metronome marks in his score, but in his
very fast recorded performance of the movement as a whole
does lend this interpretation some credence. Boughton here keeps
the two tempi closely balanced, to the considerable advantage
of the music. When the music dies down again the bells return,
marked pianissimo and to be played with a “soft felt
striker” – but here they recede too far into the background
as a consequence. They are clearer even on Holst’s old 78s,
although what we hear there does not sound at all like a “felt
striker”. The organ pedal which underpins the music could also
be more palpable. Dutoit in Montreal gets this passage just
right, and the result makes more of what could otherwise be
regarded as an over-extended “dying fall”.
The Albert Hall acoustic suits Uranus perfectly, with
the timpani passages which can frequently be obscured in a halo
of reverberation sounding ideally precise. The xylophone solo
which is so often highlighted - with grotesque results in Adrian
Boult’s 1954 reading - is properly balanced with the rest of
the orchestra. The timpani could however be more defined at
2.49 (the part is marked “solo”) although they are
better eleven bars later and thereafter. The notorious organ
glissando at the catastrophic climax also blends into
the background slightly too much, and the timpani solo at 4.40
is not really distinct enough either. The tempo of Neptune,
shown as Andante in the score, is all too often taken
by conductors to read Largo molto, but Boughton keeps
the music flowing. However the recording here does not give
any definition to Holst’s subtle orchestral effects; the tremolos
in the highest register of the harps are almost inaudible and
the subtle interplay of the harps with celesta and muted violins
is more clearly evident in the superb engineering that Decca
provide for Dutoit. Holst may have required that the orchestra
should play pianissimo and with “dead tone” throughout,
but he devoted considerable ingenuity to the provision of variety
in the texture, and it would be nice to hear more of this. The
unnamed chorus, set at a distance as Holst requires, could also
be slightly more palpable, and their internal tuning sounds
slightly insecure at the admittedly extremely difficult chromatic
passage at 6.16. At the end they fade nicely if rather rapidly
into the distance.
The coupling with the ballet music from The perfect fool
is a well-conceived one, since the music of the two scores has
much in common. This again is music that is not easy to play,
but Boughton is nicely forthright in the Dance of the spirits
of the earth even if the following Dance of the spirits
of water could be more gracefully romantic and the final
Dance of the spirits of fire is a bit brash. In the
booklet note written in 1988 Geoffrey Crankshaw makes a plea
for “some act of rescue” for the complete score of the opera
– over twenty years later we are still waiting. At the time
he was writing there had only been a BBC recording from the
mid-1960s, where Imogen Holst had laid violent hands on the
score, abridging some passages and introducing a spoken narration
to clarify points of the plot. In her book on her father’s music
she was very rude about the “intolerable” libretto (written
by the composer) and Crankshaw also adduces the “poor” text
as a reason for the score’s neglect. This really does the composer
an injustice. Although at the time of its first performance
critics suspected allegory, the plot is really a light-hearted
satire on opera in general, and a very funny one at that. What
it really requires is a production that takes the music extremely
seriously, thus making the contrast between the vocal writing
and the nonsensical words even funnier. The BBC recording of
1997 (currently available on the internet) did that, with the
exception of the miscasting of Richard Suart - a very good comic
baritone in the Savoy operas - in the central role of the Wizard,
giving a G&S slant to music which really demands a Wagnerian
singer in the Hunding/Hagen mould. Vernon Handley does
take the score seriously, obtaining superb performances elsewhere
and giving us every note of the score as Holst wrote it. Could
somebody now please take another look at the score, giving us
a properly high-class Verdian tenor for the Troubadour and a
Wagnerian bass-baritone as the Traveller? Holst’s parodies of
Verdi and Wagner are not only first-class satire, but are also
uncomfortably convincing when they are given full weight.
There are a great many extremely good performances of The
Planets in the catalogues – and this is an extremely
good one. There are also a few which give us exactly this coupling
with the Perfect fool ballet music, including a very
good one by Sir Charles Mackerras with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic;
recordings by Solti and Mehta,
both available coupled with Boult’s early 1960s Perfect
fool, are rather superficial by comparison. The minor imperfections
in balance - largely the result of the natural problems in Holst’s
own scoring - in this Nimbus recording are not serious enough
to prevent a strong endorsement for Boughton’s performance.
On a purely personal level I stand by Dutoit’s Decca version,
both for its more individual view on the score and its superlative
if less natural engineering.
Paul Corfield Godfrey
Philharmonia Orchestra/William Boughton