Early Twentieth Century Music from England

Cover of the album being discussed (from its Amazon.com Web page)

This Friday will see the release of a new Onyx album surveying works by two Englishmen composed in the early decades of the twentieth century. Most of the album is devoted to Gustav Holst, beginning with the St Paul’s Suite, which was very popular in my student days and is almost never performed these days. The other Holst selections were new to me: “A Fugal Concerto” (Opus 40, Number 2), Two Songs without Words, and the early Opus 4, “Egdon Heath,” given the subtitle “A Homage to Thomas Hardy.” The remainder of the album offers three selections by George Butterworth composed between 1911 (Two English Idylls Found on folk-tunes) and 1913 (“The Banks of Green Willow”). The last of the tracks, “A Shropshire Lad,” was composed in 1912.

Holst was a relatively familiar composer during the second and third quarters of the twentieth century, particularly since he composed music for concert bands. However, by the last quarter of that century, that genre of English concert music was on a decline. My guess is that audiences began to experience in that music a strong touch of nostalgia for a time that they no longer remembered.

That nostalgia is most evident in the Butterworth selections. I confess that it is a nostalgia that I share, partly because some of the tunes were familiar to my parents. On the other hand, while the music of Holst has been with me since my own “distant past,” I was delighted with the opportunity to encounter the St Paul’s Suite again. The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, under the baton of Andrew Manze, gave this music a delightfully vigorous account, which reminded me of the fun I had in playing all that band music!