David Lloyd Jones Holst Gustav The Planets (2004) [sacd R][of]

This version of Holst’s endearing masterpiece, “The Planets”, sounds very good in Naxos’ super audio 5.1 technology. I do not have the point one (subwoofer) hooked up in my house and assume, by listening to the recording in 5.0, that the timpani — which are already very powerful and forward placed — would be explosive if you listened in 5.1. The sound is very good otherwise, with wide ranging and natural orchestral body and timbre. It is not the best super audio sound I’ve heard but it is good and a big improvement over the stereo sound on the last version of “The Planets” I purchased, the one Berlin Philharmonic and Simon Rattle released last year.

Hyperion’s record of the month for January presents, for the first time, the original version of Delius’s Piano Concerto. Two years after completing this work in 1904, Delius recast it, rejecting the third movement and reorganizing other material. Perhaps thinking that the solo part wasn’t sufficiently pianistic, Delius also consulted a friend, the Busoni pupil Theodor Szántó, who rewrote the piano part in virtuoso style (with Delius’s ultimate approval). It is the Szántó version that has, until now, always been performed. With Delius’s original, characteristically refined orchestration also restored (from the orchestral parts that survive from the first performance in 1904), we can now hear this work as the composer envisaged before the involvement of another hand.

This release was an "Editor's Choice" in Gramophone Magazine (12/05) and features the world premiere recording of Ralph Vaughan Williams's "Willow-Wood" as well as the return to the catalog of his "The Sons of Light." Both are cantatas dating from 1909 and 1951 respectively. The former is a passionate outpouring for baritone, women's voices and orchestra that's not to be missed. Drawn from Dante Gabriel Rossetti's The House of Life, it consists of four interlinked sonnets, which describe a dreamlike, amorous encounter by a rustic well.

Composed in 1882/3, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Piano Concerto was the last of a series of works written in the very happy middle period of his life; other compositions of this period, rich in charming lyricism, included the opera The Snow Maiden and the orchestral Szakza (‘Fairy Tale’). The Concerto was first performed in March 1884 at one of Balakirev’s Free School concerts in St Petersburg and was the last work of Rimsky to be wholly approved of by his erstwhile mentor. While the lyricism is still sincere and deeply felt in the Concerto, the work also foreshadows the master artificer of the later years.

Hyperion’s Romantic Violin Concerto series reaches its tenth volume, and turns to two composers based in England, and works by them which have lain hidden for decades. This disc provides a fascinating glimpse of musical history and the shifting fashions of the age which made fame such a fleeting thing for so many composers.

Constant Lambert like his colleague Peter Warlocktends to be remembered more for his personal charisma and tragically early death than for his music. Yet the twenty or so extended scores which he did compose (The Rio Grande and Summer's Last Will and Testament being perhaps the most well known) are every bit as worthy as those of his more famous contemporaries. The bulk of Lambert's output was directed at the ballet, and he was the first Englishman ever to be commissioned by Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes quite an achievement for a twenty-year-old. As a result of this, Nijinska commissioned Pomona, a ballet rich in the atmosphere of neoclassicism and the French dance music of the 1920s.

The Planets, composed between 1914 and 1916, is a suite of seven movements. Holst's starting point for the music was the astrological character of each planet, though his interest in astrology went no deeper than its musical suggestiveness…

The idea of John Eliot Gardiner not only doing Holst's The Planets, but doing it so effectively, shouldn't have come as a surprise, considering his broad musical culture and the success he has always had with large-scale works. His interpretation is quite reminiscent of Sir Adrian Boult's mid-'60s account with the same orchestra (then called the New Philharmonia)–tasteful yet full of character, impeccably played, energetic, fresh. On top of that, the recording is breathtaking. There is extraordinary inner detail, with string tone that is natural (as is the timbre of winds and high percussion) and an astonishing amount of weight in the bass. The coupling, Percy Grainger's The Warriors, is a wonderfully erudite touch–just what we should expect from Gardiner–and a romp for him and the orchestra.