Gustav Holst - The Cloud Messenger; The Hymn of Jesus (Richard Hickox)

Information

Composer: Gustav Holst

• The Cloud Messenger, for contralto solo, chorus & orchestra, Op. 30
• The Hymn of Jesus, for chorus, semi-chorus & orchestra, Op. 37

Della Jones, contralto

London Symphony Chorus & Orchestra

Richard Hickox, conductor

Date: 1990

Label: Chandos

https://www.chandos.net/products/catalogue/CHAN%208901

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Review

Here is a real discovery. In her book on her father's music, Imogen Holst dismissed The Cloud Messenger as ''a dismal failure'' and in his recent study of the composer Michael Short is not much more enthusiastic. Yet probably neither author heard the work in performance. Holst himself regarded it as important and was deeply despondent when its first performance in 1913 was a failure. Since then it has hardly been heard and this recording is almost certainly the first fully professional performance for decades.

So once again a fatal initial verdict has kept fine music from listeners for the best part of a century. The Cloud Messenger proves to be a lengthy (45 minutes) and large-scale work of considerable imaginative power, a setting of a Sanskrit text translated by Holst. Its scope makes the appearance of The Planets as his next work much less surprising. There are one or two weak passages, as there are in Vaughan Williams's A Sea Symphony, but very many more of striking beauty, superbly written for the choir and imaginatively scored. Some episodes are prophetic of The Hymn of Jesus, which is also included on this disc. Imogen Holst seems to have disapproved of the romantic strain in some of Holst's pre-1914 works, deriding them as ''Wagnerian''. I think the combination of warmth and ascetic ecstasy is what gives Holst his originality, and I hope that Richard Hickox's enterprise in unearthing this superb work will be rewarded by its restoration to its rightful place. Performance and recording alike are first-rate, with Della Jones a dramatic soloist in the middle section.

There has never been any question about the mastery of The Hymn of Jesus. Perhaps Boult's restrained approach (coupled with The Dream of Gerontius on a two-disc set from Decca) comes nearer to what Holst intended, but there is certainly room for Hickox's more expansive interpretation. In any case, though, it's The Cloud Messenger that makes this disc unmissable for devotees of British music—and, I hope, by others. Dismal failure, my foot!'

-- Gramophone

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Gustav Holst (21 September 1874 – 25 May 1934) was an English composer and teacher. He studied at the Royal College of Music under Charles Villiers Stanford. Holst served as musical director at Morley College from 1907 to 1924, and pioneered music education for women at St Paul's Girls' School from 1905 until his death in 1934. He was an important influence on younger English composers, including Edmund Rubbra, Michael Tippett and Benjamin Britten. Apart from The Planets and a handful of other works, his music was generally neglected until the 1980s, when recordings of much of his output became available.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_Holst

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Richard Hickox (5 March 1948 – 23 November 2008) was an English conductor of choral, orchestral and operatic music. He studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London, then was an organ scholar at Queens' College, Cambridge. Hickox founded the City of London Sinfonia, as well as the Richard Hickox Singers and Orchestra, in 1971. He was Chorus Director of the London Symphony Chorus (1976 to 1991), Artistic Director of the Northern Sinfonia (1982 to 1990), Principal Conductor of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales (2000 to 2006), and Music Director of Opera Australia (2005 to 2008).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Hickox

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