Gustav Holst: Orchestral Works, Vol. 1 BBC National Orchestra of Wales - Richard Hickox

• Gustav Holst (1874 - 1934): The Ballet from ‘The Perfect Fool’, Op. 39:
• 1Andante01:00
• 2Dance of Spirits of Earth: Moderato - Andante03:48
• 3Dance of Spirits of Water: Allegro03:02
• 4Dance of Spirits of Fire: Allegro moderato - Andante03:41
• The Golden Goose, Op. 45 No. 1:
• 5Sound of drum and trumpets play03:50
• 6The Mummers' Play04:35
• 7The Human Organ01:53
• 8Jack creeps up, unseen by court03:07
• 9Dance of the three girls03:24
• 10The Goose Dance02:57
• 11Jack and Princess embrace04:58
• The Lure:
• 12The Lure10:15
• The Morning of the Year, Op. 45, No. 2:
• 13'I am that which men did make'04:28
• 14Dance of Headman and Hobby-horse03:00
• 15Dance of Youths03:22
• 16Dance of Maidens02:37
• 17Mating Dance04:28
• 18Dance of the Youngest Couple03:03
• Total Runtime01:07:28

Info for Gustav Holst: Orchestral Works, Vol. 1

Richard Hickox, one of the foremost exponents of British music, embarks on his survey of orchestral works by Holst with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. The Planets is at the heart of the English repertoire, yet much of Holst’s orchestral output is unjustly neglected. This series will demonstrate that Holst was a composer of great inventiveness.



Volume 1 offers three rarely recorded works, the ballets The Lure, The Golden Goose and The Morning of the Year, alongside the more familiar Ballet from the one-act opera The Perfect Fool, long recognised as one of Holst’s most successful small-scale works.
The Golden Goose and The Morning of the Year are known as ‘choral ballets’. The Golden Goose was composed for Morley College, where Holst had been Director of Music since 1907, and was intended for amateurs. The ballet is based on the Grimms’ fairy tale of the Princess who had never been able to laugh. The Morning of the Year was the first work to be commissioned by the BBC Music Department, and so is an altogether more serious affair and dedicated to the English Folk Dance Society. This is one of Holst’s most impressive fusions of folk music with his own style, and has no need of the stage to make its full impact.



The Lure shares some of the same origins with the Perfect Fool ballet. The music was written in 1918 as incidental music for a play called The Sneezing Charm by Clifford Bax but at the time it was performed neither as a ballet nor as an orchestral piece. Frustrated by the lack of performance, Holst eventually withdrew the work from his list of compositions. Based on a Northumbrian folk tune, it is lively and powerful, and typical of the composer.



Holst had no desire to be predictable and if he has sometimes seemed to be eclipsed by his more gifted contemporaries he remains one of the most original and innovative musicians of the past century. This recorded survey is sure to shine new light on his neglected works and introduce a new audience to his orchestral music.

'Richard Hickox was a fine Holst conductor, and it was typical of his championship of English music and of his enthusiastically exploring mind that he should have left as one of his last records this collection of such-little known works… This is a fascinating record' (International Record Review)

BBC National Orchestra of Wales
Richard Hickox
Joyful Company of Singers

Gustav Holst: The Perfect Fool, Op. 39
Andante
Dance of Spirits of Earth: Moderato - Andante
Dance of Spirits of Water: Allegro
Dance of Spirits of Fire: Allegro moderato - Andante
Gustav Holst: The Golden Goose, Op. 45, No. 1
Sound of drum and trumpets play
The Mummers' Play
The Human Organ
Jack creeps up, unseen by court
Dance of the three girls
The Goose Dance
Jack and Princess embrace
Gustav Holst: The Lure
The Lure
Gustav Holst: The Morning of the Year, Op. 45, No. 2
'I am that which men did make'
Dance of Headman and Hobby-horse
Dance of Youths
Dance of Maidens
Mating Dance
Dance of the Youngest Couple

The BBC National Orchestra of Wales
BBC National Orchestra of Wales occupies a special role as both a national and broadcasting orchestra. The orchestra has won acclaim with its conducting team of Principal Conductor Thierry Fischer, Principal Guest Conductor Jac van Steen, Associate Guest Conductor François-Xavier Roth and Conductor Laureate Tadaaki Otaka.

As well as the core repertoire, the orchestra undertakes adventurous programming in new or rarely-performed works. In 2008 Simon Holt took up the role of Composer-in-Association, consolidating the ensemble's commitment to contemporary music.


BBC National Orchestra of Wales is Orchestra-in-Residence at St David's Hall, Cardiff, presents a concert series at the Brangwyn Hall, Swansea and tours throughout Wales. It performs every year at the BBC Proms and at other major UK festivals and undertakes international touring. Education and community outreach is integral to the orchestra's musical life and extends its work into schools, workplaces and communities.

The orchestra is based at its state-of-the-art recording and rehearsal base, BBC Hoddinott Hall at Wales Millennium Centre. It works closely with radio and television programme-makers and records numerous soundtracks, including BBC Wales's Doctor Who and Torchwood series and the BBC's Human Planet series. Recent CD recordings include the 2011 Grammy-nominated Ivanhoe by Arthur Sullivan on Chandos.

Richard Hickox - Conductor
Born: March 5, 1948 - Stockenchurch, Buckinghamshire, England Died: November 23, 2008 - Swansea, Wales, UK

The English conductor, Richard (Sidney) Hickox, studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London from 1966 to 1967, and was an organ scholar at Queen’s College Cambridge from 1967 to 1970. In 1971 Richard Hickox founded in London the Richard Hickox Singers & Orchestra, with which he gave programs of works ranging from the 14th century to the present era. He also founded the City of London Sinfonia in 1971 and is its Music Director, and following a long association with the London Symphony Orchestra he is their Associate Guest Conductor. From 1982 to 1990 he was Artistic Director of the Northern Sinfonia, and is now Conductor Emeritus. In 1990 he formed a new period instrument group together with Simon Standage: Collegium Musicum 90. His contract as Principal Conductor of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales starts in September 2000.

Richard Hickox was internationally recognised as one of Britain's leading conductors and was the recipient of the 1998 Association of British Orchestras award, the 1995 Royal Philharmonic Society Music Award, three Gramophone Awards, the Diapason d’Or, the Deutsche Schallplattenpreis, and in 1997 a Grammy for his recording of Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes. His part in the Royal Opera House’s productions of B. Britten’s Paul Bunyan and Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Pilgrim’s Progress was also recognised in awards from the Evening Standard, Olivier Awards and a second Royal Philharmonic Society Award, all in 1998.

Joyful Company of Singers
One of Europe’s most prominent chamber choirs, the JCS is renowned for its virtuosity and intensity of spirit, as well as for an astoundingly wide repertoire, ranging from the 16th Century to the present day. An important element of the choir’s raison d’être is its commitment to contemporary and new music, including a high proportion of first performances, and supported by several highly-successful Educational Projects. Many composers have written music for JCS, including David Bedford, Michael Berkeley, Judith Bingham, Jonathan Harvey, Alun Hoddinott, Roxanna Panufnik, Kaija Saariaho and Malcolm Williamson.

Formed in 1988, by conductor Peter Broadbent, the choir first came to prominence when it won the Sainsbury’s Choir of the Year competition in 1990. Since then it has maintained its profile in the music world, winning an impressive list of national and international competitions leading to many invitations. JCS regularly appears at all the UK’s major music festivals, including Bath, Aldeburgh, Cheltenham, City of London, Chelsea, Presteigne, Spitalfields, Three Choirs, Huddersfield Contemporary Music and the BBC Proms. Equally prominent in Europe, JCS has performed at festivals in France, Germany, Denmark, Hungary, Italy, Poland and Russia, broadcasting in many countries as well as on BBC and Classic FM. The choir and Peter Broadbent were honoured to receive the “Guidoneum Award” from the Fondazione Guido d’Arezzo in recognition of its achievements and promotion of choral music. In the USA, JCS has given concerts at Stanford University, in Los Angeles and San Diego, and appeared at the National Convention of the American Choral Directors’ Association, in Texas.

Performances with orchestras include many with the City of London Sinfonia with the late Richard Hickox, CBE, and with Mark Elder, Nicholas Kraemer and Stuart Bedford, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (Sir Andrew Davies), the Southern Sinfonia, the Britten Sinfonia (Alec Roth), the BBC Concert Orchestra, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, the Northern Sinfonia and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment (Sir Roger Norrington). Soloists have included Dame Felicity Lott, Carolyn Sampson, Patricia Rozario, Sarah Fox, Mark Padmore, James Gilchrist, Roderick Williams and Stephen Varcoe as well as instrumentalists Philippa Davies, Paul Watkins, Madeleine Mitchell and Robert Cohen.

Booklet for Gustav Holst: Orchestral Works, Vol. 1