BSO: Holst 150

Conductor; David Hill Cello; Jesper Svedberg Soprano; Anna Devin Baritone; Andrew Foster-Williams

Holst Symphony in F ‘The Cotswolds’
Holst Mars, the Bringer of War
Holst Invocation
Vaughan Williams Dona Nobis Pacem

The work is at once pastoral and romantic, the music fully expressing Holst’s affection for the landscape. It is also a gentle tribute to the great designer and Socialist visionary, William Morris, who was one of Holst’s great heroes, evoking Morris’ vision of the English countryside as a Heaven on Earth. It is a joyful work with hints of the greatness to come, and his masterpiece The Planets, with its visionary opening Mars, the Bringer of War. Invocation, a hauntingly contemplative work for cello and orchestra, has a shimmering, mystical quality that is curiously evocative – exotic, and yet somehow, unmistakably English. Written during the build up to the Second World War, Vaughan Williams’ Dona Nobis Pacem is an eloquent cry for peace and a reminder that war inevitably brings misery and loss before culminating in a joyous vision of the ending of war through reconciliation between people and nations and the hope for a brighter future.