Thanks for spotting that one my Lord! I would have missed it otherwise. I remember meeting Imogen when I was little; nice old lady - a bit sort of Hinge-and-Brackety, but very nice and I love her father's music.

Did anyone hear the Holst Choral Fantasia today? It was new to me, and I found it profoundly moving - what a remarkable figure he was, creating extraordinary scores with little or no axe-grinding, just getting on with producing this other-worldly music.

There are a couple of things they missed out which underline still further just how Holst might have developed had he lived longer (his great friend Vaughan Williams was born two years earlier, but lasted another twenty-four). There's a Scherzo, a single extant movement from a projected symphony he was working on at the time of his death, which made an immediate impression on me the first time I heard it, and has remained with me ever since, and a strange little Capriccio, originally written for American concert band but rescued by Imogen for more conventional forces. Both are unmistakeably Holst works from first bar to last, and confirm that he was more forward-looking than some of his earlier works might suggest; an evolving composer, rather than one stuck in the same place all his life, which seems to be the impression most people have of him.

It was good to hear the Imogen programme, but perhaps the week might have been better served if we could have had a fifth day of her father's works, and a separate week for British women composers with relatively small outputs: Imogen Holst, Doreen Carwithen (William Alwyn's wife) and Minna Keal, for example.

Music of Holst is a discovery for me. I am listening to Thursday programme for a few times (Friday is not available on listen again).  Ballet music from Perfect Fool is very good. One doesnot hear such an exciting music often. Really good music full stop, so expressive, exciting, beautiful. Orchestration is good too. How many times one hears trombone solo in orchestra? There is a celest (or is it harp). There a lots of wood winds too.
Fugal concerto is so good. I could hear Bach's influence very obvious I thought.

if you crane your neck tony you can see we've all got a finger in our ear and an arran sweater,if thats \the right way round.

Thank you martle. Now I understand why it is. I think marbleflugel understood it like me: Holst is a folk's composer. I was trying to get some meaning and took marbleflugel post like that.

Yes, the 'Choral Fantasia' is wonderful,and a good example of just how original Holst was at his best. What a pity there seems to have been only this one recording of it,albeit an excellent one.

Another fine and sadly neglected work of his is the 'Ode to Death' .Maybe the title puts people off, though it is not at all a gloomy work,but very rapturous and consoling.