September 2024 saw the release of Discovering Imogen from NMC - a new album of music by Imogen Holst, performed by the BBC Concert Orchestra and BBC Singers, conducted by Alice Farnham. Listen here.
The works on the recording include the Overture Persephone (1929); the earlier Suite in F Allegro assai for strings (1927); Suite for String Orchestra from 1943 (the only piece on this album to have previously received a professional performance); What Man is He? from the 1940s; Festival Anthem (1946, orch. Colin Matthews); On Westhall Hill completes the album.
Imogen Holst has been hiding in plain sight as a composer…her mature, individual musical voice – harmonically imaginative, immediate and pleasingly unsentimental – comes over strongly…muscular, piquant string writing - fans of Tippett’s string music will love it.
The Guardian (Erica Jeal) 29 August 2024 ****
The 12-minute Persephone (1929) was written whilst Holst was a student at the Royal College of Music, where it received its first performance from Malcolm Sargent. For large orchestra, with harp and celesta, the evocative score reflects the mythological suggestions of the title and shows the influence of Ravel. The 15-minute Suite for String Orchestra is cast in four movements and was premiered by the composer. It opens with a lilting Prelude in 5/8 whose patterns shift throughout; it is succeeded by a rambunctious fugue with a rugged folk-like subject in three. The third movement is a limpid intermezzo with a spotlight on a solo violin in its middle section. A scurrying Gigue (presto) serves as finale.
On Westhall Hill is a 5 ½-minute work for a small orchestra of single woodwinds, strings, timpani, and one percussionist. The music is based on two folk tunes, not identified: an ethereal, mysterious opening frames a vivacious central sequence with scurrying woodwinds taking the melodic lead, before a more declamatory close. Festival Anthem is an 18-minute setting of Psalm 104 for chorus and strings, created by Colin Matthews for this recording. The 18-minute work begins with a broad statement of a stately melodic idea, in rich, choral textures, followed by more playful, dance-like sequences.
Imogen Holst was pivotal in the founding of NMC Recordings with composer Colin Matthews. Holst’s establishment of the Holst Foundation not long before she died in 1984, ultimately went on to ensure that NMC was set-up to continue the Foundation’s support of the work of living composers.
Over the last twelve months, Imogen Holst has been celebrated by the Royal Philharmonic Society event A National Treasure and in Mark Ravenhill’s play Ben and Imo, performed at Stratford-upon-Avon. On 24 November Midori Komachi and the Elgar Sinfonia of London, conducted by Adrian Brown, give the first modern performance of Holst’s Concerto for Violin and String Orchestra; read about the piece in BBC Music Magazine here.