Gustav Holst
Gustav Holst’s music moves from the cosmic sweep of The Planets to spare, singing folk and Christmas settings that choirs still reach for. His arrangements of English song and carols carry a clear line and a quiet ceremonial glow.
English folk melody sits at the centre of much of what he wrote for voices. I Love My Love and the ringing Personent Hodie arrangement show how he could harden a traditional tune into something processional and unsentimental. Christmas Day braids familiar carols into one festive span for choir and orchestra. Beyond the seasonal pieces, his ear for colour and for plain, purposeful harmony shaped chamber opera, Sanskrit hymn settings and school-suite writing that still sounds fresh. The Planets made his name; the smaller choral and folk works keep him in active repertoire.
Compositions by Gustav Holst appear on
I Can Tell The World
Saucy Purcell rounds, madrigals, drinking songs, spirituals and English folk settings from one of Australia's finest choirs, directed by Douglas Lawrence.
We Wish You a Merry Christmas
The Choir of Ormond College, directed by Douglas Lawrence, presents a varied selection of twenty-eight Christmas carols. Familiar favourites sit beside Bach and Pachelbel organ pieces and twentieth-century settings.
The Choir of Ormond College Melbourne
Directed by Douglas Lawrence, who led chapel music at Ormond College, Melbourne, for more than twenty years, this recording presents the college choir in English church music of the sixteenth and twentieth centuries.