Persephone, which Imogen Holst wrote as a student in 1929, starts off sounding so familiar that you might think you have wandered into a concert of Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloé by mistake. But so what? The music that follows that opening passage of suspiciously evocative rippling woodwinds is a delectable 12-minute tone poem showcasing a composer with her own ideas about texture, colour and tonality, as well as the myth itself.
Holst tells a story of rebirth, building towards a glowing culmination that references the music of the beginning. In between there’s no depiction of lustful kidnap, but a darker music takes over, the strings feeling their way into an uneasy fugue, the muted brass playing clustered chords that are then pounded out by the whole orchestra. Perhaps Holst had been listening to Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring as well as Daphnis, but you can’t argue with those as models for a student composer in 1929 – or in fact at any time since.
