Page 267 - Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Coverage Book 2023-24

14 July 2024
Holst’s folky side is laid bare at Cheltenham, plus

the best of July’s classical concerts

The RLPO marked the English composer’s 150th birthday on a rumbustious evening that ended in
a blaze of glory
By Ivan Hewett and Claire Jackson14 July 2024 • 11:17am

He allowed the music to breathe: conductor Andrew Manze CREDIT: Chris Christodoulou

Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Cheltenham Music

Festival ★★★☆☆

The Cheltenham Music Festival may be somewhat diminished since its glory days in the last
millennium but it still offers a wonderful programme of brilliant young performers and intriguing
premieres. For the 2024 edition, the focus has been on local boy Gustav Holst, known to millions
through his orchestral suite The Planets (first performed in 1918), but precious little else. That’s a
sad omission as Holst was a fascinating figure, who learned Sanskrit while working as a jobbing
trombonist and music teacher, and was influenced by Japanese and Indian music.

This year marks the 150th anniversary of Holst’s birth, so this was surely the moment for the
Festival to reveal that “there’s more to Holst than The Planets”—which they did, sort of, but in a
disappointingly timid way. They offered none of the Indian-inspired works, or his strange
orchestral piece Egdon Heath (1928), which exceeds The Planets in harmonic daring. Still, they did