Gustav Holst’s wonderfully spare chamber opera, based on an episode from the Mahabharata, is one of the underrated jewels of 20th-century British music, and the earliest of Holst’s stage works to have maintained any kind of place in the repertoire. Despite its importance in his output, though, commercial recordings are surprisingly few, and what is arguably still the finest currently available, conducted by Holst’s daughter Imogen with Janet Baker in the title role, is now almost 60 years old. This new version, recorded in Germany, does not quite displace that classic, but it is still impressive. Unlike its rivals, it has a soprano, Siri Karoline Thornhill, in the title role, rather than a mezzo, with Tilman Lichdi as Sāvitri’s husband Satyavan, Ekkehard Abele as Death and Klaus Simon conducting the Holst-Sinfonietta.
The rest of the disc is filled with some of Holst’s songs – the Four Songs for Voice and Violin Op 35 and extracts from the Humbert Wolfe songs Op 48 and the Vedic Hymns Op 24 in Simon’s own orchestrations. The whole disc has been assembled with great care, making a genuinely thoughtful contribution to this year’s celebrations of the 150th anniversary of Holst’s birth.
