This Week in Classical Music: September 16, 2024. Gustav Holst. We must admit that we’re not big fans of Gustav Holst’s music, though we readily acknowledge the talent of this English composer. Neither are we greatly enamored with the music of his best friend Ralph Vaughan Williams, or the older and more famous Edgar Elgar, or practically any other British composer of the late 19th - early 20th century.We know they’re all very dear to the English heart, but we find the music composed during the same period in Germany, Austria, France and Russia much more interesting and more to our taste.Nevertheless, September 21st marks the 150th anniversary of Holst’s birth, and obviously, we should recognize this important date. (History plays games with us: just last week we celebrated the 150th anniversary of Arnold Schoenberg, creating an interesting if unintended juxtaposition).
Holst was born in Cheltenham, a spa town in the Cotswolds.His father’s side of the family was of German descent and musical, his mother was English.Interested in music from an early age, Holst studied composition at the Royal College of Music with the prominent composer Charles Villiers Stanford.Till The Planets were first performed in 1918, Holst had to support himself by teaching and playing the trombone in different orchestras; none of his early compositions achieved popular success. That all changed with The Planets.This is an unusual piece, as few seven-movement symphonic works have ever been composed.Holst started working on it in 1913 and completed the suite in 1917.The premier, held on September 29th of 1918, less than six weeks before the end of WWI, was conducted by Adrian Boult.Boult, then 28 years old, lived to the ripe age of 92 and conducted almost till the end.The concert took place in the old Queen’s Hall, then the main performance venue in London (the hall was destroyed by a German bomb in 1941).It was a semi-private affair, as only selected listeners were invited, and the hall was half empty.While the structure and the musical language of the composition were quite unusual, many of the reviews were positive, and even those newspapers that first panned the music changed their minds soon after.Even though several subsequent performances played only four or five movements of the whole work, The Planets’ reputation grew with every concert and solidified soon after.In 1922 Holst himself conducted the first recording of the suite; more than 80 recordings have been made since then.
Here is the first movement of The Planets, Mars, the Bringer of War.Herbert von Karajan conducts the Vienna Philharmonic.And here, with the same performers, is the very contrasting last movement of the suite, Neptune, the Mystic, with a hidden chorus.This recording was issued in 1962.
Holst 150, 2024
This Week in Classical Music: September 16, 2024. Gustav Holst. We must admit that we’re not big fans of Gustav Holst’s music, though we readily acknowledge the talent of this English
composer. Neither are we greatly enamored with the music of his best friend Ralph Vaughan Williams, or the older and more famous Edgar Elgar, or practically any other British composer of the late 19th - early 20th century. We know they’re all very dear to the English heart, but we find the music composed during the same period in Germany, Austria, France and Russia much more interesting and more to our taste. Nevertheless, September 21st marks the 150th anniversary of Holst’s birth, and obviously, we should recognize this important date. (History plays games with us: just last week we celebrated the 150th anniversary of Arnold Schoenberg, creating an interesting if unintended juxtaposition).
Holst was born in Cheltenham, a spa town in the Cotswolds. His father’s side of the family was of German descent and musical, his mother was English. Interested in music from an early age, Holst studied composition at the Royal College of Music with the prominent composer Charles Villiers Stanford. Till The Planets were first performed in 1918, Holst had to support himself by teaching and playing the trombone in different orchestras; none of his early compositions achieved popular success. That all changed with The Planets. This is an unusual piece, as few seven-movement symphonic works have ever been composed. Holst started working on it in 1913 and completed the suite in 1917. The premier, held on September 29th of 1918, less than six weeks before the end of WWI, was conducted by Adrian Boult. Boult, then 28 years old, lived to the ripe age of 92 and conducted almost till the end. The concert took place in the old Queen’s Hall, then the main performance venue in London (the hall was destroyed by a German bomb in 1941). It was a semi-private affair, as only selected listeners were invited, and the hall was half empty. While the structure and the musical language of the composition were quite unusual, many of the reviews were positive, and even those newspapers that first panned the music changed their minds soon after. Even though several subsequent performances played only four or five movements of the whole work, The Planets’ reputation grew with every concert and solidified soon after. In 1922 Holst himself conducted the first recording of the suite; more than 80 recordings have been made since then.
Here is the first movement of The Planets, Mars, the Bringer of War. Herbert von Karajan conducts the Vienna Philharmonic. And here, with the same performers, is the very contrasting last movement of the suite, Neptune, the Mystic, with a hidden chorus. This recording was issued in 1962.