Holst: The Cloud Messenger / 5 Partsongs
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GUSTAV HOLST
Holst: The Cloud Messenger / 5 Partsongs
The Choir of King's College London, The Strand Ensemble, Joseph Fort
[ Delphian / CD ]
Release Date: Friday 24 April 2020
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In 1910, after seven years of work, Gustav Holst completed his choral-orchestral masterpiece,The Cloud Messenger. But following a disappointing premiere in1913 the piece fell into obscurity, and has received only a handful of performances.
This crowning glory from the composer's Sanskrit period deserves to be much better known. Telling the powerful fifth-century story of an exiled yaksha who spies a passing cloud and sends upon it a message of love to his distant wife in the Himalayas, it is rich in its harmonic language and ingenious in its motivic construction, and points the way to Holst's next major work,The Planets.
This colourful chamber version by conductor Joseph Fort lends the more tender passages a new intimacy and clarity, while retaining much of the force of the original and laying the ground for a new life in performance.A set of five part songs, completed the year The Cloud Messenger was begun, shows the newly married Holst similarly absorbed by love's trials and rewards
"Tempos and balance are ideal under Fort's direction, while the instrumental ensemble plays beautifully. The choir blends well, despite the occasional raw tone from the tenors at their top. In sum, this is an enjoyable disc and a good introduction to an unfairly neglected work" Fanfare
"Joseph Fort has created a reduced scoring, with a 15-piece instrumental ensemble in proportion to the 22-strong chamber choir of King's College London, and he has done so with sensitivity, skill and an evident love for Holst's visionary, rapturously romantic score...The singing, too, has a lovely sweetness and purity of tone. The alto soloist Caitlin Goreing soars as ardently as any on record." Gramophone
Tracks:
The Cloud Messenger, Op. 30, H. 111 (Arr. J. Fort for Choir & Chamber Ensemble)
5 Partsongs, Op. 12, H. 61
