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YOUR HELP STILL NEEDED!
Divine Art dda 25138JUPITER ‘This is one of my favourite pieces.’ The boy who
first heard it conducted by Leonard Bernstein at a Young
People’s Concert in New York is entirely unembarrassed by
the bluff humour and hustle and bustle of the opening which
harks back to the first movement of Vaughan Williams’s
A London Symphony premiered a few months before Holst
began his work on the movement. Then comes the sturdy
country dance: ‘This is the most controversial thing I do:
although Holst writes meno mosso for the reprise of the theme,
I feel that both statements can start slower and speed up. This
adds a burlesque element, like something out of a Broadway
show. I love doing it that way and it makes people smile.’
As for the hymn tune, the Princess Diana moment:
how stiff should its upper lip be? Litton takes his cue from
the composer’s 1926 recording. ‘At bars 203 and 219 he has
everyone sliding down to the B flat, so we do it too. And I do
open out at the climax in a big way. I’m sorry, I make a big
deal out of it! Not that I’m apologising for my actions or
setting out to be different: I want to be true to the composer,
and to convey what I think works best in the piece.’
SATURN ‘When the suite is excerpted in pops concerts,
they stop before this one, which is such a shame. There is
real tragedy in this movement. I have the sense of an
old grandfather clock in the two harps and the low flutes
alternating on off-beats – the stillness and silence of someone
sitting in the dark and reflecting on their life.’ Holst’s
cool processional, drawing on the melody of the Russian
Kontakion of the Departed, acquires a centre of gravity – until
the tension and grief can no longer be restrained. ‘The biggest
challenge here is the entry into the animato, which most of us
treat twice as fast. I try not to make it sound as organised and
arithmetically exact as that, because I think if he’d wanted
that, he’d have written it. This section is like a cry for help,
especially with the loud bells on off-beats.’ Back in 1998,
Gramophone readers were warned about ‘syrupy violin slides’
in the coda; ‘Guilty,’ is Litton’s cheerful admission.
URANUS ‘Is it The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, or not?’ After Venus,
it’s the most French movement of the piece, surely indebted
as much to Le sacre (those savage timpani tattoos) and
Petrushka (grumpy bassoons) as to Dukas. There are more
Stravinskian rhythmic games between figs 1 and 3 – ‘really
nasty. We rehearse it slowly. It’s over in 40 seconds, but it
needs to be right’ – but the main challenge according to
Litton lies in the articulation of the main theme, which has
a quaver up-beat, not a crotchet. The conductor is looking for
the element of grotesque fanfare. ‘This is not a nice magician!
He’s quite evil.’
NEPTUNE ‘This movement is one of the things that makes me
proudest of the new recording,’ says Litton. ‘The Grieghallen
in Bergen has a proscenium stage with a shell, but behind that
is all this space, and behind that is a corridor which is also
full of reverb. So we placed the ladies back there, and because
there are doors on either side, we were able to shut the doors
just as Holst requested.’ It’s an elegant, ‘analogue’ solution
which is usually solved on record with digital trickery – after
all, with this piece Holst invented the ‘fade to black’ adopted
by film and pop. ‘How perfect for a movement at the edge of
space,’concludesLitton:‘Theman-madesatellitehashurtled
intothebeyond–andallthisin1914.’
Andrew Litton’s new recording of The Planets is reviewed on page 55