Tag Archives: Gustav Holst

Steven Isserlis – revisiting Elgar and discovering Walton

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steven-isserlisCellist Steven Isserlis is one of Britain’s best-loved classical artists – loved for his highly respected interpretations of the cello repertoire, but also for his open, honest and enthusiastic approach to classical music.

Isserlis, an author of books introducing children to the likes of Beethoven, Handel and Schumann, generously donated time to talk to Arcana about the roots of his love of the cello, his new disc of Cello Concertos by Elgar and Walton and his new work as an author.

Can you remember your first encounters with classical music?

I can’t remember a time without music! From the time I remember anything, my sisters were already learning instruments, and I used to go to sleep at night to the sound of my father practising the violin and my mother the piano.

How did you develop a love of the cello?

My sister Rachel played the violin, and my elder sister Annette was always going to play the viola. So a cellist was needed – that would be me. So my parents took me to a local teacher, and – after a false start at the age of four or five – I began lessons from the age of six. I think my love for the cello developed as I came to realise that if I played OK I could be the centre of attention!

What was it like returning to record Elgar’s Cello Concerto? Was it invigorating in the company of someone (the conductor Paavo Järvi) who may not have encountered the composer’s music so much?

Well, I’ve played the Elgar so many times over the 25+ years since I first recorded it that it seemed a good idea to record it again. It’s true that Paavo needed a bit more persuading than he did for our Prokofiev / Shostakovich disc, but not much more; he’s always up for a challenge.

Was it your aim to bring out a little more of the humour in the last movement of the Elgar, given the relative darkness around it? It also feels a little quicker than your first recording of the concerto.

It was not a conscious aim – I really didn’t think about (or listen to) the earlier recording. But yes, there is humour in parts of the last movement – which for me throw the tragedy into even sharper relief.

This is the first time you have recorded the Walton (I think!) I’m assuming you knew it very well before, but what effect did it have on you in the recording process?

I’m not sure it had any particular effect on me ‘in the recording process’, but I’d been wanting to record it for some years, since I feel passionately about it. I always name the Schumann, Dvorak, Elgar and Walton concertos as the four very greatest cello concertos (though I’d be bereft without those of Haydn, C.P.E. Bach, Boccherini, Saint-Saëns, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Dutilleux etc).

It feels like a very romantic piece, with sighing melodies and deeply felt thoughts. Given your booklet note for the release, is that how you would view it?

Definitely – romantic, poetic, impassioned, magical.

The Gustav and Imogen Holst pieces make fascinating complements. Do you think people are in neglect of just how adventurous Gustav’s music could be?

Perhaps. To my shame, I know very little of it. But I love Invocation, maybe especially so since I had something of a part in its rediscovery.

What do you remember of Imogen Holst as a person, and of the piece here? Her ‘Presto’ seems to me (a bit of wishful thinking I’m sure!) to depict birds chasing each other in the reeds at Aldeburgh.

I remember Imogen as a wonderfully quaint personality who was also sharp as a stainless steel razor! Wonderful. I’ve always thought of the Presto as depicting leaves flying around in a storm. Recently I was sent a note by the work’s dedicatee, Pamela Hind O’Malley, apparently written with Imogen’s approval, which describes it as ‘the scuttering of leaves in a high wind’. I like that word ‘scuttering’!

I understand you have just completed a book – are you able to tell us more about it at this stage?

It’s advice for young musicians – incorporating and updating Schumann’s book of the same name. I suppose that means that I’m now an old musician – groan…

Is it important for you to communicate to people, young and old, in a language that brings classical music to everybody?

Absolutely! And I enjoy playing for children, as well as writing for them – it can be tremendous fun.

Do you think classical music should do more to get the music beyond its ‘inner circle’, so to speak?

Well, yes – but not if that means distorting it, or promoting sugary crossover stuff. Classical music doesn’t need that!

You can hear extracts from the new Steven Isserlis disc of cello concertos by Elgar and Walton, released by Hyperion Records, here – including shorter pieces by Gustav Holst – his Invocation – and his daughter Imogen, a short suite for solo cello The Fall of the Leaf.

Meanwhile forthcoming concerts from the cellist are listed on his website

Under the Surface at the Proms – John Foulds’ Three Mantras

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Prom 38, 13 August 2015 – London Symphony Chorus Womens’ Voices, BBC Philharmonic Orchestra / Juanjo Mena at the Royal Albert Hall

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John Foulds Three Mantras (1919-1930)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/events/exq5v2#b064y5hj

We definitely undervalue the BBC orchestras when the Proms take centre stage. I say that because this was one of the most colourful orchestral Proms it has been my pleasure to witness, and much of the credit for that should go to the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, a riot of bright shades under Juanjo Mena in Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphony. Yet while that performance will inevitably take centre stage, it was another work that stole the show.

John Foulds has spent a long time languishing in the musical wilderness, but in the last ten years he has begun to reach a bigger audience. A good deal of thanks for this should go to conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Sakari Oramo, who recorded two discs of his orchestral works with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. They enchanted us with Foulds’ inventiveness, and most importantly his eagerness to incorporate Eastern cultures within an extremely Western art form. In this respect he was in line with Gustav Holst.

One of the finest works in this respect is the 3 Mantras, thought to be part of a massive Sanskrit opera, Avatara. Very sadly that never came to be, and 300 pages are lost from the score, but the 3 Mantras survive and make a very accomplished and unusual orchestral piece. The colours are simply beautiful, achieved through a wide variety of percussion, harps and shimmering strings, all of which Mena marshalled to show the detail of Foulds’ inventive orchestration.

It is the second piece, the Mantra of Bliss (starting at 8:13 on the link above) that is the most striking, a meditation of radiant orchestral beauty, where Foulds uses a wordless female chorus to enchanting effect. Holst had done this before, in Neptune from The Planets, but rather than that cold emptiness Foulds creates exotic warmth.

The outer two mantras are very different; the first a bustle of activity that slows for a moving slower melody; the third an almost barbaric dance that wheels out of control and wields a fearsome set of percussion at the end. This was a terrific performance from the BBC Philharmonic, showing off Foulds’ gifts to a new audience that will hopefully look to discover more of the music of this remarkable composer.

Want to hear more

You can hear a playlist from BBC Radio 3’s CD Review, where Andrew McGregor explores recordings of John Foulds’ music, by clicking here

There will be more Under the Surface features as the Proms progress, exploring lesser known pieces and composers at the festival

The Borrowers – Manfred Mann’s Earth Band: Joybringer

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What tune does it use?

Jupiter from Gustav Holst’s orchestral suite The Planets, written between 1914 and 1916.

Jupiter must be one of the most plundered bits of Holst’s set of planets for orchestra. Its stirring central theme became the melody of the song World In Union, used by Kiri te Kanawa for the 1991 Rugby Union World Cup in the UK, as well as in countless other vocal arrangements (Kathryn Jenkins et al). Here though, a much more original bit of ‘sampling’ gives rise to a fantastically uplifting pop song, completed by Manfred Mann’s Earth Band in 1973.

How does it work?

Mann takes the tune from 0’57” in the Planets, clip below:

Then he moves it down in pitch by half an octave to make the whole tune.

Then, after the second chorus (at 1’32”) Mann uses another tune from Jupiter:

Here is the original:

The band subject it to a synthesizer improvisation before it goes into the growly Hammond Organ at the bottom. Then, before we know it, we’re back to the tune, and joy is unconfined!

What else is new?

Joybringer comes from the album Solar Fire – in which Mann continues to use the whole of The Planets for inspiration in the song titles. Listen to it via Spotify below: