ALEX HALL is disgusted by the misuse of ‘emotional narratives’ to justify uninformed geo-political prejudice
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Marxist notes on music: January 22, 2023
Time to celebrate Gustav Holst, an innovator who helped bring brass band instruments into the orchestra and wrote for working-class musicians
LIFE IN PICTURES: (L to R) Gustav Holst, left, and Ralph Vaughan Williams walking in the Malvern Hills, September 1921; The house in Barnes where Holst lived between 1908 and 1913; Holst caricatured by F Sancha as ‘The Bringer of Jollity’ c1921
SUE TURNER welcomes a thoughtful, engaging book that lays bare the economic realities of global waste management
JOHN GREEN welcomes an insider account of the achievements and failures of the transition to democracy in Portugal
SIMON PARSONS applauds an imaginative and absorbing updating of Strindberg’s classic
PETER MASON is enthralled by an assembly of objects, ancient and modern, that have lain in the mud of London’s river
MICK McSHANE rubs shoulders with Mod legend Steve Craddock and joins in with the joyous Glasgow choir
DENNIS BROE sifts out the ideological bias of the newest TV series offerings, and picks out what to see, and what to avoid
GUSTAV HOLST is a composer who is one of the most obvious demonstrations of a composer known almost entirely for one work — The Planets Suite. Written 1914-17, the composition is a tour-de-force, which sadly is often overlooked because of the likes of Classic FM and others focusing purely on the barn-stomping movement Mars and Jupiter.
On September 21 we will celebrate the 150th anniversary of his birth and for me a high point as he has had a wonderful influence on me throughout my life, particularly when I reflect on what it means to be an English composer.
I got my foundational musical education through brass banding. It was also colliery bands where I learnt a lot of my politics too — chatting to the old boys about their experiences during the ’84-85 strike and other union struggles.
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