Phonograph Monthly Review, Vol. 6, No. 5 (1932-02)

82 The Phonograph Monthly Review Holst in America An interview with one of the first contemporary composers to conduct his own works for recording by R. D. DARRELL A N AMERICAN visit by Gustav Holst to conduct three concerts of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and to give a half-year course in composition at Harvard University gave a welcome opportunity to interview one of the most vital contemporary composers and one of the first to make phonographic versions of his own works. Mr. Holst, hold- ing admirably old-fashioned and uncommon notions on self-publicity, frankly warned me in advance that I should expect very little in the way of publishable information from him. “I don’t go in for this sort of thing at all at home, but I have been received so kindly in America that I feel I must make an ex- ception to my rule of not giving interviews. But please don’t ask me the conventional re- porters’ questions. I’ve been here only twice before and for a very short itme. All I know about America, all most people in England can know, is that it is very big, bigger and richer in variety than we can really conceive. And I’m heartily sick and tired of visiting Europeans who rush into print with their personal opinions and prejudices on anything and everything American!” In the face of such refreshing candor I looked forward, not as I had expected to a wealth of material on the phonograph and nationalism in music, but to a better notion of the reserved yet tremendously vital per- sonality behind the powerful music of the Planets and the Dance of the Spirits of Earth. With this in mind I arrived early for my appointment at Symphony Hall and slipped in on one of the rehearsals for Mr. Holst’s concerts in Providence and Boston. For it is in rehearsal that a conductor’s powers are best displayed. There one glimpses in em- bryo and growth musical effects that come off with such seeming naturalness and ease in concert and on records. Even among the most assiduous collectors and students of re- corded orchestral works there is little genu- ine understanding and appreciation of the weary hours and herculean efforts that are required for an adequate public exposition of the music at hand. Remembering Mr. Holst’s recorded performances and then hearing him carefully evolve his concert per- formances of several of the same works was a remarkable, a revelatory musical experi- ence, giving new significance to a thousand little details accepted almost without anal- ysis when they are heard in their finished state. One had to watch Mr. Holst on the con- ductor’s stand no more than a few minutes to get a vivid impression of the man and musician. He is no sensationalist, no show- man. To him the orchestral men are flesh and blood, not merely mechanical instru- ments. Informally, good-humoredly, with- out condescension or affectation, he painstak- ingly goes over the ground to be covered, much as an alert and sensitive tutor would go over a difficult but engrossing problem with a group of talented students. Never a subscriber to the currently pop- ular faith in machine-like precision as an end in itself, I was delighted with the way Mr. Holst strove for exactness only where exact- ness was demanded, letting the orchestra have its head in the more exuberant pass- ages. Without sacrificing anything to cor- rectness, he refused to be enslaved by it, getting a natural fire and spontaneity to his performances that are all too often missing from the overly studied “interpretations” of many virtuoso conductors. One of the works in rehearsal for the Pro- vidence concert was his own orchestration of Bach’s organ Fugue a la Gigue, and Mr. Holst spent most of his available time in ob- taining clarity, gusto, and dynamic restraint in the first half or so of the piece. Then in the gloriously joyous close he leaned over and told the players just to “settle down and enjoy yourselves!” They did indeed, and the listener could not fail to be carried along with their evident enjoyment in the music. Later, when I talked with Mr. Holst, I got an interesting sidelight on this work. “When I was studying the organ some forty years or more ago. it struck me that of all Bach’s organ works, just one, this fugue, seemed ineffective on the instrument for which it was composed.” (The phonophile who checks up on the organ version—recorded by Goss- Custard for Victor—is certain to come to the