Imogen Holst Conducts Gustav Holst

Another splendid trawl through the treasurable Lyrita back-catalogue. Here's an uncommonly wide-ranging and generous selection of Holstian delights, encompassing music as stylistically diverse as the folk-song bumptiousness of the early Two songs without words (a VW dedication from 1906) to the ''tender austerity'' (to use the composer's own phrase) of the Lyric Movement for viola and chamber orchestra—a most haunting creation from his penultimate year. Elsewhere, we are offered such rarities as the colourful Golden Goose ballet music and Capriccio (both expertly reworked by Holst's daughter, Imogen), the gritty Double Concerto of 1929, as well as the composer's own string orchestra transcription of the tender ''Nocturne'' from A Moorside Suite—a marvellous work, scored originally for brass band (I do wish Decca would restore their superb Grimethorpe Colliery Band version to currency). The enchanting Brook Green Suite is here, too, but the outstanding account of the popular St Paul's Suite which came with it on that 1967 LP anthology will have to wait a little longer for its silver-disc debut.

Performances throughout possess unfailing insight, and the present remasterings are superb. An essential companion disc to Lyrita's classic Holst/Boult compilation from last year (7/92).

-- Andrew Achenbach, Gramophone [4/1993]