Homage to Holst - Cheltenham Town Hall

Monday 3rd November 2008

This is a Crackerjack review of Cheltenham's Homage to Holst. Do you agree? Rate and review this event.

Crackerjack rating: 8 / 10.

The Holst Birthplace Museum deserves to be more widely known and more generously supported. Hopefully, this concert will have given the Museum valuable publicity as well as much-needed funds.
 
The concert aimed to recreate the 1927 concert in the Town Hall at which the citizens of Cheltenham honored Gustav Holst.  It was customary in the past to include numerous short pieces in programmes so on this occasion the first half ended in less than 45 minutes.  Three short works together seemed somehow unsatisfying. We began with Cecil Coles's overture, The Comedy of Errors, which on a first hearing seemed inventive and attractive but with echoes of Mendelssohn.  George Butterworth was represented by his The Banks of Green Willow, a pleasant enough composition that perhaps needed smaller orchestral forces.   Both these composers were killed in action in World War 1. Holst's seldom performed Invocation for cello and orchestra was the third short piece and Julian Lloyd Webber played beautifully on his Stradivarius but it ended all too soon. This work needs to be performed more often.
 
The second half was devoted to Holst's suite, The Planets, and Mars appropriately reminded us of the sacrifice of those two young composers' lives. The excellent amateur Saloman orchestra under conductor Martyn Brabbins gave a splendidly confident account of Holst's masterpiece which is so varied in its content.   The unruliness of war is followed by Venus, the Bringer of Peace. Mood changes abound as we proceed from jollity to old age, with its laboured and measured tread. The final section, Neptune the Mystic ,was beautifully rendered not least by the ladies of the Cheltenham Bach Choir, the effect of whom was suitably haunting.  Holst's wonderful orchestration of The Planets suite never ceases to amaze.

Donald Hollins

This is a Crackerjack review of Cheltenham's Homage to Holst. Do you agree? Rate and review this event.