HOLST THE WANDERING SCHOLAR Suite de ballet • A Song of the Night Ingrid Attrot soprano Lesley Hatfield violin Neill Archer tenor Alan Opie baritone Northern Sinfonia Donald Maxwell bass Richard Hickox Greg Barrett Richard Hickox (1948 – 2008) Gustav Holst (1874 – 1934) Suite de ballet, Op. 10 19:24 in E flat major • in Es-Dur • en mi bémol majeur 1 I Danse rustique 2:25 2 II Valse 3:44 3 III Scène de nuit 7:14 Bradley Creswick violin 4 IV Carnival 5:51 5 A Song of the Night, Op. 19 No. 1* 8:31 3 The Wandering Scholar, Op. 50† 25:24 6 Louis: ‘When boughs are green in April’ – 3:37 7 Alison: ‘When rainbows follow flying showers’ – 0:58 8 Philippe: ‘Piggy, piggy, piggy!’ – 2:33 9 Alison: ‘Someone is coming!’ – 1:46 10 Pierre: ‘Before that I was twenty’ – 3:50 11 Philippe: ‘Learned? Comely?’ – 1:42 12 Alison: ‘Heigho, a pretty knave!’ – 3:40 13 Louis: ‘He’ll lie all day in the sun’ – 1:47 14 Pierre: ‘As I was walking here to-day’ 5:28 TT 53:40 Ingrid Attrot soprano (Alison)† Neill Archer tenor (Pierre)† Alan Opie baritone (Louis)† Donald Maxwell bass (Father Philippe)† Lesley Hatfield violin* Northern Sinfonia Richard Hickox 4 Holst: The Wandering Scholar and other works Gustav Holst, until the First World War known unknown. With his growing recognition during as von Holst, came from a refugee Latvian– the 1970s, particularly through recordings, Russian musical family that had arrived in it was time to explore his earlier music. England in the early nineteenth century, and Though his mature voice took many years to settled in Cheltenham. His father taught emerge, technically accomplished and often Holst the piano, violin, and trombone, and as of striking invention, these earlier works have a teenager the young Gustav was organist proved worthwhile in their own right. or choirmaster at local churches, and wrote In addition to Landsdown Castle, among music for local performance, including a his earliest music Holst wrote some half- well-received operetta, Landsdown Castle. dozen operettas, all long-forgotten, often A pupil of Stanford at the Royal College of with children in mind: The Revoke, The Idea, Music from 1893 to 1898, he later earned Ianthe, The Magic Mirror (unfinished), the Fairy his living playing the trombone with the Carl Pantomime of Cinderella, and The Youth’s Rosa Opera Company and then the Scottish Choice, the latter written, unsuccessfully, for Orchestra. Becoming a school master, he a competition. Subsequently he launched was appointed to St Paul’s Girls’ School in into his Wagnerian epic Sita, which after Hammersmith, where he remained until 1934. seven years’ toil failed to win the Ricordi Despite a large catalogue of music, opera competition. This prompted a total Holst was in his forties before he achieved change of direction with the austere chamber recognition as a composer. He established opera Sávitri, completed in 1908 but not himself after the First World War with his performed until 1916, and not widely known suite The Planets, one of the most successful until after the war. Later came two more British orchestral works of all time, but his operas, The Perfect Fool, parodying Wagner mature career was cut short by his early and Verdi to the puzzlement of the Covent death. Garden audience in 1923, and At the Boar’s Until the 1970s most of his music was little Head, a ‘musical interlude in one act, founded played and his early music was completely on old English melodies’ after Shakespeare’s 5 King Henry IV. When The Wandering Scholar Coates, twenty years on. The ‘Scène de nuit’, was performed in January 1934 Holst was too an atmospheric violin solo, reminds us that at ill to attend and died soon after. It remained the turn of the century Holst wrote many such forgotten until revived by Benjamin Britten and encores, unsuccessfully seeking a popular hit. Imogen Holst, first in 1951, then later, in the 1960s. A Song of the Night Written in 1905, A Song of the Night was Suite de ballet the last orchestral work by Holst before Holst wrote this concert suite in 1899 while he discovered folksong and produced the touring with Carl Rosa. It was performed at Somerset Rhapsody, his earliest music to the first Royal College of Music Patron’s achieve regular performance during his Fund concert, chosen from a large field, on lifetime. A Song of the Night remained unheard 20 May 1904, conducted by the composer, for almost eighty years; it was not performed and repeated by Dan Godfrey at Bournemouth until September 1984. on 5 January 1905. In 1912 Holst revised the While only occasionally foreshadowing orchestration for publication by Novello, Holst’s mature voice, particularly at the subsidised by the Patron’s Fund, and a few beginning, we have to admire the sure aural more performances followed, but it never imagination, command of the orchestra, and became established, and once his suite the individual treatment. While reflecting The Planets had been heard after the popular violin encores of the 1890s, this First World War it was increasingly forgotten. music had a wholly personal mystery and Yet it is surprisingly individual light imagination. Holst left no clue to the ‘song’. Yet music, and while the ‘Danse rustique’ might he was learning Sanskrit, and if we remember bring Sullivan or Edward German to mind, the song ‘Invocation to the Dawn’, first the music soon develops a panache and published in 1903, and the later, withdrawn personal voice signalling a composer of some hymn ‘Ratri’ (The Night) we find persuasive individuality. The ‘Valse’ has an impetus that imagery. There is additional evidence: the takes it beyond the pot-boilers of Holst’s previous year Holst had written Maya for violin RCM contemporary Coleridge-Taylor, while and piano, another attempt at a popular violin the finale perhaps looks forward to the later encore encompassing his enthusiasm for development of light music in the work of Eric Indian mythology. 6 The Wandering Scholar ladder, supposed to lead to an attic [the The influence of Helen Waddell (1889 – 1965) bedroom]; down stage, a big heap of straw. on British music in the 1930s through her Centre, a plain table, with benches. On the collection Mediaeval Latin Lyrics (1929) and table lies Louis’s cudgel. her book The Wandering Scholars (1927) was In the manuscript Holst describes Alison as considerable, and her translations were set ‘a buxom and comely young woman’, who is by many composers. scrubbing the table. Her husband, Louis, The writer Clifford Bax, brother of the a cheerful farmer of about thirty, takes an composer Arnold Bax, has described how armful of straw from the heap. On his way Holst entertained Helen Waddell and himself to the door he stops to tease his wife. to dinner at the George Hotel, Hammersmith While Louis is out Father Philippe keeps Broadway, one evening, and how Holst was an assignation with Alison, who has intoxicated by her ‘Irish fluency and brilliance’. prepared food and wine, and suggests more Holst must have read The Wandering Scholars besides. They are interrupted by a caller, the when it first appeared, because he soon asked impecunious student, Pierre. Alison is taken Bax if he could make a libretto from the story with him, but Father Philippe uncharitably ‘Le Pauvre Clerc’, and Bax agreed. sends his rival on his way, though not before In this brief comedy there are no set-pieces, Pierre has noted the lie of the land. Father overture, or big tunes, and the orchestral Philippe suggests to Alison that they should go forces required are small, Holst writing in to the attic, and as he gingerly tests the ladder, rhythms that owe allegiance to folk dance, the scholar returns unexpectedly, the guest of without ever quoting actual tunes. The the farmer whom he has met on the way, and scenario, as written out in the manuscript full the priest hastily hides under the straw. Alison score, vividly sets the scene: pretends she has no food to offer, but Pierre The kitchen of a farm in France. Back, left, a spins a yarn in which he points out where door. It is open and looks out upon a picture the food and wine are hidden, and finally the suggestive of early Spring. Back, right, a Priest, whom the angry Louis chastises before narrow window, very high in the wall. Right, chasing him from the house, and then his wife up stage, a cupboard; down stage, an open up the ladder to the attic. fireplace in which a fire is burning. A black pot stands on the hearth. left, up stage, a © Lewis Foreman 7 The Canadian-born soprano Ingrid Attrot fan tutte (filmed for Channel 4) and the title divides her time between opera and concert role in Welsh National Opera’s production work. She has sung with the major British of Pelléas et Mélisande with Peter Stein orchestras and abroad with the Montreal and Pierre Boulez, which was also filmed Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Chamber for television and staged in Paris. He has Orchestra, and the Aarhus and Gulbenkian recently performed in Don Pasquale and Orchestras with conductors such as Dutoit, The Abduction from the Seraglio at English Marriner, Willcocks, Pinnock, and Hickox. National Opera, Don Giovanni and The Cunning Her opera credits include performances Little Vixen with Scottish Opera, and Iphigénie with English National Opera (The Turn of en Tauride and The Bartered Bride with Opera the Screw), Opera Northern Ireland (Don North. He will soon appear in Dialogues of the Giovanni), Canada’s Pacific Opera (Così fan Carmelites at English National Opera.