How good it is to have such excellent accounts of two major works for voice and orchestra by Holst. The first, dating from 1904 (and revised eight years later) is The Mystic Trumpeter, a setting of Walt Whitman featuring a soprano solo, and the second is the First Choral Symphony, a four-movement work with texts by Keats for soprano, chorus and orchestra. This recording might have come to light some years ago were it not for the untimely death of Richard Hickox in 2008, who passed away just as the project was beginning. Andrew Davis has more than ably assumed Hickox’s mantle and with Susan Gritton (who had begun work with the late conductor) he invests these works with all the colour and drama they demand. In The Mystic Trumpeter the overtly musical references of Whitman’s text help give shape and coherence to Holst’s musical language, allowing the composer to distance himself further from the Wagnerian idioms of which he was overly fond and edge closer to a unique personal style. The varied and often delicate nature of the orchestration allows a clear and effective presentation of Whitman’s paean to love, freedom and joy. Lasting just under 20 minutes, the…

The ABC Classic 100 20th Century countdown seemed to throw up a lot of controversy last year. I must admit that until I was on air for the first session with my partner in crime Marian Arnold, I had no idea who had won. I took a peek down the list, which felt naughty, like looking at the last page of a grand novel to see how the story finishes. There it was: No 1 – the Elgar Cello Concerto. I wished I hadn’t seen it.  There is nothing wrong with the piece – it’s a lovely work – but is such a remnant of the 19th century. It seemed unbelievable that it could have won ahead of all the other magnificent and more modern pieces from the 20th century. Of course there was no point grumbling about the decision; the people voted and they got what they voted for. But it did highlight what I thought was an interesting English bias in the voting, which Julian Day also remarked on in the January issue of Limelight. Of the top five  (Elgar Cello Concerto, Holst’s The Planets, Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending and Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No 2) three are English……

This double CD is a treat for operetta fans. The Silent Serenade was designed to pave the way for Erich Korngold’s return to Germany after the war. Having given up writing for films in Hollywood and getting back to what he considered his main business, he began work on the piece in 1944. The story revolves around mysterious lovers, bomb conspiracies and mistaken identities; the usual plot devices so beloved of the genre. However, Korngold fell into that old trap which bedevils much of central European operetta – that of a poor libretto. A shame, because the music is witty, bright and melodious. It also failed, both in the US and Germany, because it had missed its time, as the excellent notes tell us. Had the work been staged in the 1930s it might have been a hit. On Broadway, the famous producer, Jacob J Shubert, wanted to make too many changes for the composer’s taste and by the time it was sorted, Rodgers and Hammerstein had revolutionised the form of musicals. Meanwhile, “Viennese” operettas had become passé. My advice: simply ignore the book and listen to the delightful score. The small orchestral ensemble, based around two pianos, is most…

Holst’s blockbuster The Planets is a perennial concert favourite, yet its astrological message remains obscure.

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Most people who want the much-recorded music by Elgar and Co will already have it, and mostly in better performances. Those who only want the contemporary works by Nicolas Maw et al will likely not want Holst’s Planets or the Walton works. Doubtless there is a droll side to packaging the Dream of Gerontius with Three Screaming Popes (surely a CD first!) but I don’t imagine that was the aim. So the collection has to be for the Rattle fan club. Setting aside my usual reservations about the conductor (had he been on the scene in the 1950s he would simply have been one of a large number of excellent conductors), these are all perfectly good performances. In the case of the more contemporary music, better than that. Rattle is excellent in this repertoire, making a case for even the most unrewarding scores. For me, the musical utterances of composers such as Turnage often leave a great deal to be desired. Whereas Thomas Adès’s marvellous Asyla, has altogether more colour and variety. The bag of Elgar is mixed. Falstaff is appropriately brisk. The Enigma is excellent. The Gerontius indulgent; with Janet Baker a shadow of her former self, and Nigel…