London Symphony Orchestra
Sir Antonio Pappano conductor
LSO Live LSO0904 SACD
These live performances were recorded in September and December 2024 in the Barbican Hall. This venue is not noted for its sympathetic acoustic, although to suggest that a performance of Holst’s The Planets lacked atmosphere would be both trite and untrue.
The recording engineers have succeeded in making the sound very agreeable, but what is lacking is any sense of the space. What we are given instead is an orchestral sound of almost forensic detail. Everything is audible, a fact which would terrify a less virtuosic ensemble. All matters of tuning, intonation and balance are everything one could hope for.
Sir Antonio Pappano’s approach to the work makes the music’s progress sound inevitable. There are no surprises as regards tempi, and all Holst’s orchestral detail is given ample space to make its effect. As the Barbican Hall has no organ, the glissando for it towards the end of Uranus was, presumably, played on a digital substitute, which is regrettable.
Since The Planets is Holst’s most famous work, there is a tendency to overlook its originality. Nothing like it had been heard in any British work before 1914 and it was innovatory even by the most advanced continental standards of the time. The fact that Holst completed the first movement before the outbreak of the First World War seems surprising, as in it he appears to be foreseeing the mechanised destruction characteristic of conflicts in the middle and later 20th century. The composer’s break with the stylistic traditions of the Victorian and Edwardian eras can be seen as almost a parallel to the brutal destruction of the old order by the First World War and its far-reaching consequences.
The choice of Bax’s Tintagel as the second work on the disc is an interesting one, although written only a few years after The Planets, between 1917 and 1919. In the years after Bax’s death, interest in his music almost disappeared entirely. Now there are several complete recordings of his symphonies, as well as explorations of his output in other genres. As a depiction of a landscape and the sea, Tintagel bears comparison with Debussy’s La Mer, although much more compact. Bax’s fascination with folklore and legend leads him to quote from Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde. Dedicated to Harriet Cohen with whom he was having a tumultuous affair, Alexandra Wilson in her note makes the point that, like Bax, Wagner was also infatuated by a woman who was not his wife.
The contrast between the two works is effective, and both performances are equally satisfying, with the audible orchestral detail compensating for any lack of allure.
Review by Martyn Strachan