Prom 33: Elgar / Holst / Stanford / Vaughan Williams, BBC SO, Maltman / Brabbins

[bluestateprommer]

Tuesday 13 August 2024
19:30
Royal Albert Hall

Elgar: Overture Cockaigne ('In London Town'), op. 40

Holst: Hammersmith

Stanford (all first performances at The Proms):
(a) Songs of Faith:
1. 'To the Soul’
2. ‘Tears’
3. ‘Joy, shipmate, joy!’
(b) ‘The Fairy Lough’


Interval


Vaughan Williams: A London Symphony (1920 version)


Christopher Maltman, baritone
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Martyn Brabbins, conductor

https://www.bbc.co.uk/events/eq2n5v

https://www.royalalberthall.com/tickets/proms/bbc-proms-24/prom-33/

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0021ptr

[smittims]

The Orchestral version of Hammersmith , neglected for years, is a little-known gem. I urge al lthose who think they don't like Holst to listen to it. They might be in for a pleasant surprise.

[Pulcinella]

The Orchestral version of Hammersmith , neglected for years, is a little-known gem. I urge al lthose who think they don't like Holst to listen to it. They might be in for a pleasant surprise.

It features on this very fine Naxos CD:

https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/products/7952546--holst-beni-mora

[smittims]

Well, yes, except that that's the military band version! (you see what I mean by 'little-known?) . Fortunately there's a Chandos CD by Richard Hickox, which includes several 'littel-known' Holst works, all delightful. (though perhaps not all for those who think they dislike Holst!):

A Winter Idyll
Cotswold Symphony
Invocation
Indra
Scherzo (the only completed movement from a late symphony).

Chandos CHSA 5192

[Pulcinella]

Well, yes, except that that's the military band version! (you see what I mean by 'little-known?) . Fortunately there's a Chandos CD by Richard Hickox, which includes several 'littel-known' Holst works, all delightful. (though perhaps not all for those who think they dislike Holst!):

A Winter Idyll
Cotswold Symphony
Invocation
Indra
Scherzo (the only completed movement from a late symphony).

Chandos CHSA 5192

Apologies: I assumed that, because the whole RNSO was credited, it was the orchestrated version.
I should have listened first!

The EMI Holst Collector's Edition version that I have is also military band: Central Band of the RAF.

[Serial_Apologist]

Well, yes, except that that's the military band version! (you see what I mean by 'little-known?) . Fortunately there's a Chandos CD by Richard Hickox, which includes several 'littel-known' Holst works, all delightful. (though perhaps not all for those who think they dislike Holst!):

A Winter Idyll
Cotswold Symphony
Invocation
Indra
Scherzo (the only completed movement from a late symphony).

Chandos CHSA 5192

The scherzo from the apparently uncompleted symphony is simply wonderful; on the basis of it alone it's hard not to weep at the absent rest of it which Holst was apparently working on on his deathbed, and contemplate what it might have sounded like - one of musical history's great tragedies.

[EnemyoftheStoat]

It's also available in this guise:

Gustav HOLST (1874-1934)
A Fugal Overture op.40 no.1, H151
A Somerset Rhapsody, op.21 No.2, H87
Scherzo, H192
Egdon Heath, op.47, H172
Hammersmith, op.52, H178
Capriccio (1932)
London Symphony Orchestra/Richard Hickox
rec. February, 1994 at All Saints’ Church Tooting, United Kingdom
CHANDOS CHAN10911X [57:49]

I must admit to neglecting Hammersmith until recently, when I put it on having just given the same forces' London Symphony a hearing.

I had been under the misapprehension that it was some sort of 'appy 'ammersmith thing a la Coates. Wrong!

[LMcD]

Further proof - were it needed - that there's much more to Holst than The Planets: Chandos CHAN 9270, which features the following works:
Double Concerto / Two Songs Without Words / Lyric Movement / Brook Green Suite / Fugal Concerto / St Paul's Suite (Hickox/City of London Sinfonia)

[cloughie]

Well, yes, except that that's the military band version! (you see what I mean by 'little-known?) . Fortunately there's a Chandos CD by Richard Hickox, which includes several 'littel-known' Holst works, all delightful. (though perhaps not all for those who think they dislike Holst!):

A Winter Idyll
Cotswold Symphony
Invocation
Indra
Scherzo (the only completed movement from a late symphony).

Chandos CHSA 5192

There was a Lyrita Holst LP - LPO conducted by Sir Adrian Boult on SRCS56, which included Hammersmith.

[smittims]

Yes, the Boult was , for many years,the first and only available recording, for a work that had had to wait nearly 40 years. The military band version had been recorded by World Record Club. I must admit I found Sir Adrian's version a bit 'sober' after a wonderful performance I had on a tape, with Charles Groves conducting the Liverpol Phil.

[Pulcinella]

I realise that you (smittins) are exhorting us to hear the orchestral version; is there any sign that that's what we'll actually get in this Prom (given my confusion over the Naxos release)?

[cloughie]

Yes, the Boult was , for many years,the first and only available recording, for a work that had had to wait nearly 40 years. The military band version had been recorded by World Record Club. I must admit I found Sir Adrian's version a bit 'sober' after a wonderful performance I had on a tape, with Charles Groves conducting the Liverpol Phil.

I have always thought of Sir Adrian as a conductor who did ‘sober’ very well! Always reliable and efficient! Uncle Bernie was in the same mould!

[Pulcinella]

September's BBC MM has just arrived, and its cover CD is all Holst: but not Hammersmith.
:-(

Indra
The Mystic Trumpeter
A Somerset Rhapsody
Four part-songs
Japanese Suite
The Perfect Fool

[smittims]

Thanks, Pulcinella, I might look that up: presumably they'll all be from BBC broadcasts.

I'm sure it'll be the orchestra version at the Prom. The only ensemble listed is the BBC S.O. and I cant see the BBC paying for a military band as well.

[Pulcinella]

Thanks, Pulcinella, I might look that up: presumably they'll all be from BBC broadcasts.

I'm sure it'll be the orchestra version at the Prom. The only ensemble listed is the BBC S.O. and I cant see the BBC paying for a military band as well.

Not sure if all broadcast, but certainly BBC ensembles involved, Indra being from a 2013 Prom.

Regarding Hammersmith, I take your point, but the RSNO Naxos CD I mistakenly thought of as containing the orchestral version merely mentions the orchestra, and it's only the liner notes that say 'played here in the wind-band instrumentation', so it was from that perspective that I wondered what we'd get.