Composer: Gustav Theodore Holst
Performer: Caitlin Goreing, The Choir of King’s College London
Orchestra: The Strand Ensemble
Conductor: Joseph Fort
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: Delphian
Release: 2020
Size: 1.07 GB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes
The Cloud Messenger, H111
01. No. 1, Prelude
02. No. 2, O Thou, Who Com’st from Heaven’s King
03. No. 3, In the City of the Great God
04. No. 4, Bringer of Rain
05. No. 5, Rushing Northward
06. No. 6, See How All Greet Thee
07. No. 7, Behold the Villages
08. No. 8, As the Rain Descends
09. No. 9, Tarry Not, O Cloud, Tarry Not
10. No. 10, Tarry Not, O Cloud
11. No. 11, And Hark!
12. No. 12, Thou Hast Reached the Snowy Peaks
13. No. 13, And See! The Great God Himself
14. No. 14, Moderato maestoso – Vivace
15. No. 15, When the Dancers Are Weary
16. No. 16, Wait Near Her Flower-Covered Window
17. No. 17, The Message [I, the Bringer of the Rain]
18. No. 18, Beloved!
Partsongs (5), Op. 12, H. 61
19. No. 1, Dream Tryst
20. No. 2, Ye Little Birds
21. No. 3, Her Eyes the Glow-Worm Lend Thee
22. No. 4, Now Is the Month of Maying
23. No. 5, Come to Me
In 1910, after seven years of work, Gustav Holst completed his choral-orchestral masterpiece,The Cloud Messenger. But following a disappointing premiere in1913 the piece fell into obscurity, and has received only a handful of performances. This crowning glory from the composer’s Sanskrit period deserves to be much better known. Telling the powerful fifth-century story of an exiled yaksha who spies a passing cloud and sends upon it a message of love to his distant wife in the Himalayas, it is rich in its harmonic language and ingenious in its motivic construction, and points the way to Holst’s next major work,The Planets. This colourful chamber version by conductor Joseph Fort lends the more tender passages a new intimacy and clarity, while retaining much of the force of the original and laying the ground for a new life in performance.A set of five part songs, completed the year The Cloud Messenger was begun, shows the newly married Holst similarly absorbed by love’s trials and rewards