Holst: A Somerset Rhapsody, A Fugal Overture, Egdon Heath, Hammersmith, Capriccio & Scherzo

Album review

If you're only ever going to get one disc of the music of Gustav Holst, one of them should be a recording of The Planets. Brilliantly scored, wonderfully evocative, and wholly memorable, The Planets is justly Holst's most popular work and there have been dozens of great recordings of the work from the first Boult to the last. But if you're looking to try a second disc of the music of Gustav Holst, try this one from 1994 by Richard Hickox conducting the London Symphony Orchestra on Chandos. The Lyrita recordings were swell in their day, but for a modern recording of convincing performances of Holst's best orchestral works that aren't The Planets, this disc has got the goods. The London Symphony Orchestra plays as well as it ever has, which is to say, superbly. Hickox conducts with sympathy and strength and he holds the L.S.O. in the palm of his hand. Together, Hickox and the L.S.O. play Holst's A Fugal Overture with panache and élan, his A Somerset Rhapsody with pastoral intensity, and his Scherzo with wit and vivacity. Best of all, they play Egdon Heath -- Holst's most severe, most devastating, and certainly his greatest work -- with the massive gravity and concentrated cruelty that it deserves. The Hammersmith Prelude and Scherzo and the disc-closing, posthumously completed Capriccio are bright and delightful, if anti-climactic, after the fatalistic depths of the Egdon Heath. Chandos' sound is bottomless in the best sense of the word.
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