Tag Archives: Gustav Holst

English Music Festival 2024

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Here is a nod in the direction of the English Music Festival, returning next month for 2024. For the first time, all festival events will be held in Dorchester-on-Thames. The concerts will take place in Dorchester Abbey, while the talks will be held in the historic Village Hall. The details, copied from the press release, are below:

The seventeenth annual English Music Festival (EMF) returns to Dorchester Abbey, Oxfordshire from Friday 24 May until Bank Holiday Monday 27 May 2024. Celebrating anniversaries of two of Britain’s greatest composers across the event, the opening concert, given by the BBC Concert Orchestra and conductor Martin Yates, features Stanford‘s Clarinet Concerto with soloist Michael Collins, and Holst‘s ‘Cotswold’ Symphony. Vaughan Williams’s ‘Richard II’ Concert Fantasy is given a World Premiere, alongside works by Doreen Carwithen and Frederick Delius. Orchestral, chamber and choral concerts continue throughout the weekend.

The English Music Festival celebrates the brilliance, innovation, beauty and richmusical heritage of Britain with a strong focus on unearthing overlooked or forgottenmasterpieces of the late-nineteenth to mid-twentieth century.

“Each year audience feedback proclaims the latest EMF the best yet and we are delighted to be able to continue developing and improving our now much-loved Festival”, says Em Marshall-Luck, Festival Founder-Director. “This year’s is typical EMF programming, in the range from solo piano recitals to full orchestra and choral concerts, and from early music through to contemporary, while we retain our focus on the EMF’s raison d’etre, those overlooked and forgotten works by British composers of the Golden Renaissance.

“We are delighted to have been able to attract top performers from abroad, with musicologist, tenor and English-music expert Brian Thorsett joining us from the USA and brilliant pianist Peter Cartwright from South Africa, where the EMF has a collaboration with the University of Witswatersrand in Johannesburg. I am particularly looking forward to their concerts, as well as-in particular-the Vaughan Williams premiere with the BBC Concert Orchestra, and the first modern performance of a gorgeous work by Sir Thomas Armstrong, as well as pianist and Radio 3 presenter, Paul Guinery‘s late-night recital, which celebrates the release of his third disc of Light Piano Music for the Festival’s own record label, EM Records.” The works of Gustav Holst (1874-1934) have been at the heart of Founder-Director Em Marshall-Luck’s programming at the EMF and remain a perennial favourite amongst audiences, with many memorable performances of the composer’s often overlooked major works having been given, as well as recorded by the Festival’s independent recording arm, E M Records. This year, the composer’s early Symphony, ‘The Cotswolds’, takes centre stage.

One of the leading musicians of his generation – as performer, conductor, composer, teacher and writer, Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924) had a profound effect on the development and history of English music. In addition to the Directorship of the Royal College of Music, amongst other august musical establishments, and his influence on several generations of composition students who went on to became household names, Stanford was a prolific composer, completing seven symphonies, eight string quartets, nine operas, more than 300 songs, 30 large scale choral works and a large body of chamber music.

The centenary of his death this year provides an opportunity for evaluation of some works from the large canon that have fallen under the radar. For the EMF’s opening concert, there will be a rare performance of Stanford’s Clarinet Concerto featuring one of today’s leading exponents of the instrument, Michael Collins.

WORLD PREMIERES

First performances include the World Premiere of Ralph Vaughan Williams’s ‘Richard II’ Concert Fantasy; the complete incidental music the composer was commissioned to write for Frank Benson’s 1912-13 production at Stratford, which will be performed by the BBC Concert Orchestra under Conductor, Martin Yates.

Vaughan Williams first discovered Shakespeare as a child when he was given the complete edition by his relative, Caroline Darwin, and ‘Richard II’ become a favourite. The composer took Shakespeare’s many references to English folk-ballads as supporting his own ‘national’ approach to music, saying “Shakespeare makes an international appeal for the very reason that he is so national and English in his outlook.” He went on to set and write over 20 Shakespeare texts and incidental music, often using folk-songs and ballads, and the well-known ‘Greensleeves’ appears in ‘Richard II’.

CHORAL CELEBRATIONS

The EMF regularly showcase live choral music. This year The Godwine Choir and Holst Orchestra conducted by Hilary Davan Wetton bring a programme of popular favourites to Dorchester Abbey, including a first modern performance of Edward Elgar’s ‘Give Unto the Lord’, and Excalibur Voices perform works by Coleridge-Taylor, Milford, Dyson, Bainton, Walford Davies and others.

INTERNATIONAL APPEAL

Returning to the EMF is South African pianist Peter Cartwright, who joins violinist Rupert Marshall-Luck in recital to perform works by Holst, Farrar, Stanford, Bliss and Howells.

American tenor Brian Thorsett and pianist Richard Masters, who enjoy a particular association with British music, are making their first appearance at the EMF with a programme of Finzi, Ireland, Frank Tours and Somervell.

RELAXED LISTENING

John Andrews raises the baton for the English Symphony Orchestra in a programme of works by Finzi, Delius, Howells, Milford, Dyson and Warlock, while Piano Trio, Ensemble Kopernikus, performs Delius, Holst, Rebecca Clarke, John Ireland and Percy Hilder Miles. Pianist and British music specialist, Phillip Leslie, performs works by Rawsthorne, Bowen, Dyson, Leighton, and John Ireland’s masterpiece, ‘Sarnia’.

Rosalind Ventris and Richard Uttley will be performing works for viola and piano including Rebecca Clarke’s Viola Sonata. Rosalind’s album ‘Sola’ is currently nominated for a BBC Music Magazine award in the 2024 ‘Premiere’ category.

Always a popular fixture, late-evening recitals are a special feature of the EMF, with the ancient warmth of Dorchester Abbey providing the perfect setting for audiences to relax in and enjoy a performance from The Flutes & Frets Duo – Beth Stone (historical flutes) and Daniel Murphy (lute; theorbo and guitar), and for a discovery of the lighter side of British composers when pianist Paul Guinery returns to the keyboard. Informative talks include those on anniversary composers, Stanford and Holst, as well as Farrar and Bliss.

This year, the Festival is remaining in Dorchester-on-Thames for the duration of the long weekend.

FURTHER INFORMATION

Further information including the full programme is available on the EMF’s website

Tickets go on sale via the website from 22 March (8 March to Festival Friends) and by means of a postal booking form. Full Festival and Day Passes are also available. Tickets for individual concerts will be available on the door, subject to availability

On Record – Roderick Williams, Rupert Marshall-Luck, BBC Concert Orchestra / John Andrews – La Belle Dame (EM Records)

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Roderick Williams (baritone) (Holst, O’Neil, Quilter & Scott), Rupert Marshall-Luck (violin, Brian), BBC Concert Orchestra / John Andrews

Brian orch. Marshall-Luck Legend B144 (c1919)
Delius Petite Suite d’Orchestre no.1 RTVI/6 (1889-90)
Holst Ornulf’s Drapa H34 (1898, rev. 1900)
Mackenzie Colomba Op.28 – Prelude (1883)
O’Neill La Belle Dame sans Merci Op.31 (1908)
Quilter orch. anonymous The Faithless Shepherdess Op.12/4 (1908)
Scott The Ballad of Fair Helen of Kirkconnel Op.8 (1900)

EM Records EMRCD085 [61’21’’] English texts included
Producer Neil Varley Engineers Andrew Rushton, Robbie Hayward
Recorded 5-7 January 2023 at Battersea Arts Centre, London

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

EM Records continues its enterprising schedule with this collection of mainly vocal settings from the early twentieth century – heard alongside early orchestral pieces by Mackenzie and Delius, plus a recent orchestration of what is Havergal Brian’s only surviving chamber work.

What’s the music like?

This album’s title is also that of the 1819 poem by John Keats, its tale of ecstasy recollected in despair tangibly conveyed by Norman O’Neill in a setting which surely ranks among his finest concert works before music for theatre productions became his focus. Only marginally less compelling, Cyril Scott’s take on a typically over-elaborate ballad by Walter Scott has a keen sense of atmosphere – not least as rendered by Roderick Williams with an appropriate Lowland burr. Less involving emotionally, Holst’s setting of verse from an early Ibsen play is rather forced in its rhetoric – though the passages of emotional impulsiveness, allied to an acute feeling for orchestral textures, does presage those masterpieces of his maturity. Roger Quilter’s setting of a favourite Elizabethan lyric launches the collection with brusque charm.

Of the orchestral pieces, Delius’s early Première Petite Suite is here heard in full for the first time. Influences are easy to discern – Bizet in its whimsical Marche, Grieg in its winsome Berceuse, Massenet in its vivacious Scherzo then Fauré in its plaintive Duo – but never to the detriment of this music’s appeal, while the final variations on a sternly unison theme with ecclesiastical overtones will keep even seasoned Delians guessing as to its provenance. The likelihood of Alexander Mackenzie’s lyrical drama Colomba being revived is slim, but the Prelude to its first act has an evocative ardency which concludes this album in fine style.

John Andrews has the measure of these contrasting idioms and gets committed playing from the BBC Concert Orchestra. Roderick Williams is on fine form, as is Rupert Marshall-Luck in the Legend by Havergal Brian he himself has orchestrated. Ranging widely in expressive profile, while building considerable fervour during its relatively brief span prior to a calmly eloquent close, it is a stylish adaptation of the violin-and-piano original which has enjoyed increasing exposure this past decade. Marshall-Luck speculates whether Brian intended his own orchestral realization yet, given the composer had evidently written an orchestral piece with this title around 1915, it seems not impossible that the duo version is itself a reduction.

Does it all work?

Yes, in that the whole proves greater than the sum of its parts. Certainly, the works by Scott and O’Neill find these contemporaneous while otherwise very different figures at something near their best, while the Delius makes for an attractive sequence which deserves more than occasional revival. As, too, does the Brian given that comparable shorter concertante pieces by figures such as Saint-Saëns are being taken up by a younger generation of violinists. The spacious sound and extensive annotations are both up to EMR’s customary high standards.

Is it recommended?

Indeed. Hearing the Holst prompts the thought that, with the 150th and 90th anniversaries of his respective birth and death falling this year, now would be the ideal time for revival of his orchestral suite Phantastes – which has seemingly remained unheard since its 1912 premiere.

Listen & Buy

La Belle Dame is due for release on 19 April, but you can hear excerpts and look at purchase options on the EM Records website. For more information on the artists click on the names of conductor John Andrews, baritone Roderick Williams, violinist Rupert Marshall-Luck and the BBC Concert Orchestra

Published post no.2,126 – Saturday 23 March 2024

Happy New Year – the year ahead on Arcana

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by Ben Hogwood, editor

As this is our first post of the year, let me take the opportunity to wish all readers of Arcana a very Happy New Year! Thanks for taking the time to visit the site, I hope you will find much of interest.

In a musical sense, 2024 promises much – and offers a great opportunity to celebrate the music of some classical composers whose anniversaries fall this year. Keep visiting for more on Gustav Holst (above, his statue in Cheltenham), Gabriel Fauré, Darius Milhaud and Nick Drake – as well as the continuation of our Beethoven 200 series, which will pick up the composer’s work where we left off, with the opera Lenore. There will also be the usual reviews of concerts and new music, playlists and interviews. The aim is to add a post each day, so if you come back to the site on a daily basis you should find something new to read – and something new to listen to.

We aim to do what Manfred Mann’s Earth Band did to Holst – and bring some joy to our readers. Wishing you a wonderful 2024!

BBC Proms 2023 – Geneva Lewis, BBC National Orchestra of Wales / Jaime Martín – Pejačević, Grace Williams & Holst

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Prom 32 – Geneva Lewis (violin), BBC National Orchestra of Wales / Jaime Martín

Pejačević Overture in D minor Op.49 (1919) [Proms premiere]
Williams Violin Concerto (1950) [Proms premiere]
Holst The Planets Op.32 (1914-17)

Royal Albert Hall, London
Tuesday 8 August 2023

by Richard Whitehouse photos by Chris Christodoulou / BBC

Although this evening’s Prom did not quite conform to that ‘overture – concerto – symphony’ format it came quite close, with its first half bringing to the attention of a near-capacity house two representative pieces by women composers who most definitely warrant greater exposure.

The centenary of Dora Pejačević’s death has duly consolidated what was already a burgeoning reputation curtailed by her untimely demise at only 37. Written two years after her impressive Symphony, which Sakari Oramo has performed and recorded (and will revive at these concerts on August 14th) to great acclaim, the Overture is a curtain-raiser as succinct as it is eventful – ably contrasting its respectively impetuous and equable main ideas in a tensile development, then on to a coda which rounds off this immensely appealing piece with decisive affirmation.

With Jaime Martín an animated podium presence, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales gave it a rousing rendition then was no less finely attuned to the very different ethos of the Violin Concerto by Grace Williams, which it premiered (as the BBC Welsh Orchestra) 73 years ago. There have been few performances since but, on the basis of that tonight, New Zealand-born Geneva Lewis is an eloquent advocate – even if the initial Liricamente arguably needed more purposeful sense of direction for its pensive and often searching inwardness not to risk inertia.

Not that Lewis’ unforced manner or tonal elegance were other than appropriate in this music, as was demonstrated even more directly in the central Andante with its impressionist eddying of melodic phrases and fastidious timbral shading. Following without pause, the final Allegro brought the work’s only fast music in which Lewis’s deftness and articulation gained through her assured coordination with BBCNOW. The cadenza was incisively despatched, while the ensuing coda brought the work to a close the more satisfying for its teasing unexpectedness.

There cannot have been many Proms season this past half-century when Holst’s The Planets has not been played, and it would be good to have welcomed this account more consistently. As it was, the performance took time to recover from a Mars whose stolid tread and lack of textural clarity made for a less than gripping traversal. Venus was better, for all that Martín’s fluctuations of pulse undercut its essential raptness, and though Mercury started off with the requisite humour, some effortful playing in its latter stages left the music feeling earthbound.

This was less of an issue in Jupiter, whose outer sections had all the right verve and energy, even if the trio’s indelible tune verged on the blousy. Pacing its stark opening bars effectively, Martín rather rushed the baleful climax of Saturn, though the radiance of what followed was nothing if not eloquent and bought the best out of BBCNOW. Uranus was almost as fine in this respect, and if the central processional sounded affable rather than sardonic, the sudden emptiness of its closing stages prepared well enough for the otherworldliness of Neptune.

If Martín might have obtained even more hushed and inward playing in this final movement, a sensuous contribution from the London Symphony Chorus enhanced the music-making. An enjoyable reading, albeit one where the whole was less than the sum of its individual planets.

For more on the 2023 BBC Proms, visit the festival’s website at the BBC. You can also click on the link to listen to Dora Pejačević’s Cello Sonata, performed by Laura van der Heijden and Jâms Coleman as part of their Proms at Dewsbury concert on 6 August.

Meanwhile click on the names for more information on artists Geneva Lewis, Jaime Martín and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales – and for information on the composers Dora Pejačević, Grace Williams and Holst

When time slows down – Holst’s ‘Betelgeuse’

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by Ben Hogwood Picture courtesy ALMA – ESO/NAOJ/NRAO, E/O’Gorman/P.Kervella

A report on the Guardian website today asks why the great red giant star Betelgeuse is glowing so brightly and behaving so strangely. It is a fascinating read, and its remarkable conclusion is a reminder that the light we see from the star is actually 600 years old.

It brought to mind a setting by Gustav Holst of a great poem about the star by Humbert Wolfe. This is a highly unusual song, proceeding such a slow speed that the age of the star is never in doubt. Here it is, sung by tenor Philip Langridge with pianist Steuart Bedford: