Holst and McDowell
St Mary’s, Haddington 28/4/26
Royal Scottish National Orchestra,
Conductor Alice Farnham
Presenter Gillian Moore
This was the second of two special concerts put on this season for the Edinburgh area outwith the normal Friday evening series by the RSNO. It was a morning concert in the lovely surroundings of St Mary’s, Haddington, and it drew a decent audience on a pleasant Spring morning.
It featured the string section of the RSNO, led by Principal Guest Leader, Igor Yuzefovich, and we heard the music of father and daughter, Gustav and Imogen Holst, and a relatively new piece by Cecilia McDowall. What a delight it was!
I have a vague connection with the Holsts, in that I sang in the Holst Room in St Paul’s Girls School in Hammersmith in London, where he taught music, as soloist with the Holst Singers, one of the best amateur choirs in the UK, back in the late 1980s. Even earlier, in the late 1970s, I met and worked with Imogen Holst at the Britten/Pears School in Snape, near Aldeburgh. I remember a tiny little old lady, full of life and energy, who was always around at Snape Maltings where the summer school, inaugurated by Benjamin Britten and continued by Sir Peter Pears, took place. It was an extraordinary place, still at that time suffused with the aura of Britten (who had died in 1976, just before I arrived in 1978) and Pears. Imogen Holst had been a very important part of Britten’s circle, and she was an ever present figure when I studied there, dying soon after in 1984 at the age of 77. More of Holst later.
The concert was entertainingly introduced by Gillian Moore, Artistic Associate of the South Bank Centre in London, and someone I have known for many years. Gillian has worked tirelessly throughout her career as an educationalist and an advocate for the arts and music in particular. Her work at the London Sinfonietta and the South Bank Centre has been all about outreach, and making classical music available and interesting to the wider public. Her introductions and interaction with Alice Farnham, today’s conductor, were both entertaining and informative, and made the concert much more interesting for an audience, who, like myself I suspect, had never heard any of the music before!
We started with Cecilia McDowall’s lively piece for string orchestra, ‘Off the Ground’, premiered in Kent in 2021. Ms McDowall’s work is modern but very easy on the ear, and suffused with dance rhythms. It takes its inspiration from Walter de la Mare’s poem of the same name, about three farmers who bet each other they can dance their rivals off the ground. One, Farmer Turvey, goes a bit far, and dances under the sea with mermaids, leading both to his demise but also to winning the bet! Ms McDowall uses three tunes from John Playford’s ‘The Dancing Master’ (17th century), and we hear ‘Jiggity Foot’, ‘The Mermaid’ and ‘Bobbing Joe’, and all three combined to produce an effervescent opener to the concert, superbly played by the RSNO. It’s interesting that after last Friday’s concert in the Usher Hall, some friends and I were commenting on how superb the RSNO strings have become in recent years, and here was dramatic proof of the accuracy of our opinion. Sensational playing, in the warm and luxurious acoustic of St Mary’s, got the concert off to a great start. It was a particular pleasure to hear the strings playing at the east end of the church where I feel the sound is much better than in the middle at the crossing, where many Lammermuir Festival concerts take place. For me the sound, especially of voices, dissipates from the centre, and I think the acoustic is much better at the east end.
Next, we heard Imogen Holst’s Suite for String Orchestra, dating from 1943. She had been asked to compose a piece for strings as a beacon of light in the darkest days of the Second World War in London, and it was premiered in the Wigmore Hall.
It starts with a Prelude and Fugue, as a nod to earlier music, a serious opening leading into a quite robust fugue. The next movement, Intermezzo – Moderato, is much more introvert, a melancholy but beautiful evocation of hope in a dark place, and is followed by a finale in the form of a jig, jerky and quirky. It seemed to sum up Imogen Holst’s very particular musical style, and made me want to listen to more. Fortunately, Alice Farnham, our conductor today, has recorded a CD of much more of Imogen’s music, with the BBC Concert Orchestra and the BBC Singers, on NMC Recordings. Check it out!
The final work in the programme was Gustav Holst’s St Paul’s Suite, first heard in 1913, and was written for the pupils of St Paul’s Girls School, where Holst was Music Master from 1905 to his death in 1934. It’s a lovely work in four movements, and leaves one in no doubt that Holst was not a one hit wonder. The Planets Suite is a masterpiece indeed, but other works I have heard, and this piece today, which was new to me, are very fine. In addition to his written legacy, we in Scotland can claim a bit more of Holst, as early in his career, he played trombone in an earlier incarnation of the RSNO.
The St Paul’s Suite begins with yet another jig, a recurring theme today, as pointed out by Gillian Moore, and proceeds with an ostinato, unusually scored for high strings. The solo violin introduces the principal theme of the movement, superbly played by Igor Yuzefovich, and once again, we were able to marvel at the fine string tone of the RSNO.
The third movement is at the heart of the piece, originally labelled ‘Dance’ but changed to ‘Intermezzo’. This movement, the principal theme of which starts with a solo violin, is a lovely piece. The viola joins the violin for a duet, and finally second violin and cello join for a quartet rendition of the theme. Mr Yuzefovich was joined by Tom Dunn (viola), Jacqueline Speirs (second violin) and Betsy Taylor (cello).
The last movement is called The Dargason, and uses the folk melody of that name. The cellos introduce the familiar tune of Greensleeves, and both tunes combine to finish the suite.
It was a lovely concert, warmly conducted by the excellent Alice Farnham, who has already built up a spectacular CV, and is clearly destined for a fine career, and the audience tumbled out into the Haddington sunshine, thoroughly entertained. It was great to see the RSNO in outreach mode, away from the big cities, and this was a shining example of what can be done. Clearly there is a potential audience in East Lothian (as we know from the success of the Lammermuir Festival), and I would encourage the RSNO to do more of these concerts, if financially possible.
