Interest here will naturally gravitate toward the two-piano arrangement of The Planets made under Holst’s supervision by two of his fellow staff-members at St Paul’s Girls’ School, namely Vally Lasker (1885-1978) and Nora Day (1891-1985). Many years later, John York (who, with his wife, Fiona, currently teaches at St Paul’s) discovered a leather-bound copy (signed by the composer) of this thoroughly professional and skilful transcription for domestic consumption (in his later years, the neuritis-stricken Holst would often dictate his compositions to his loyal colleagues at the school). The Yorks tender spirited and shapely accounts, but one inevitably misses countless felicitous touches in Holst’s inspired orchestral canvas, and I can’t imagine wanting to replay it very often.
Four of the six solo items that Holst wrote between 1924 and 1932 reflect his enthusiasm for North Country folksong (fired by the tireless efforts of his close friend, WG Whittaker). Dedicated to Adine O’Neill (wife of composer, Norman) and her pupils at St Paul’s, the playful Toccata is based on the Northumbrian pipe-tune, Newburn Lads. Vally Lasker was the dedicatee of Chrissemas Day in the Morning, while the Two Folk Song Arrangements of 1927 (‘O! I hae seen the roses blaw’ and ‘The Shoemaker’) are inscribed to Nora Day; all three draw on material from Whittaker’s 1922 anthology entitled North Country Ballads, Songs and Pipe-tunes. The Nocturne (1930) and Jig (1932) inhabit an increasingly spare landscape of bracing contrapuntal and rhythmic ingenuity; both were written for Holst’s daughter, Imogen. John York plays with exemplary polish and dash, and the recordings are admirably clean, save for just an occasional hint of strain in the loudest tuttis of The Planets