Hollingsworth Conducts Humperdinck and Grieg

The English conductor John Hollingsworth (1916-63) was a fine talent who died too young. We recently heard him conducting Malcolm Arnold's Tam O'Shanter Overture in a 1955 Philips LP where he shared conducting duties with the composer. Today he leads the Covent Garden orchestra in music by Engelbert Humperdinck and Edvard Grieg.

John Hollingsworth

These are good, well-recorded performances that came out on EMI's Parlophone label in 1953 and have not been seen again, to my knowledge. The M-G-M folks issued the recordings in the US.

At the time of the recordings, Hollingsworth had already gained experience in film industry working with Muir Mathieson, at Covent Garden both in opera and ballet, and at the Proms assisting Sir Malcolm Sargent. Hollingsworth would continue his film work in later years and was very active in that realm until his early death from pneumonia. The download includes a 1954 Music and Musicians article about him.

His commercial recordings, which are not many, are primarily of lighter music. The current selections fit into that category, and are most enjoyable.

The most recent Hänsel und Gretel production at Covent Garden

The German composer Humperdinck these days is remembered primarily for one work, but an enchanting one - his children's opera Hänsel und Gretel, based on the brothers Grimm story. Hollingsworth recorded five selections from the orchestral suite, all memorable.

The second side of the LP contains music by Grieg. First is a three-movement suite that the composer extracted from his incidental music for a production of Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson's play Sigurd Jorsalfar.

Grieg's Two Elegiac Melodies were orchestral transcriptions of two songs from a set of 12 with texts by Aasmund Olavsson Vinje. The melodies' titles, "The Wounded Heart" and "The Last Spring," are taken from those songs.

I've enclosed several brief reviews of the US M-G-M pressing; the reactions to the performances ranged from "admirable" to "competent."

Bonus - Ibert's Circus

In 1952, Hollingsworth recorded the Circus music that Jacques Ibert wrote for Gene Kelly's film Invitation to the Dance (a film that did not come out until 1956). The conductor led the Royal Philharmonic for that assignment.

M-G-M issued the music on a soundtrack disc, where it was paired with Andre Previn's brilliant pastiche, Ring Around the Rosy. Truthfully, neither the Ibert piece nor the recording is as good as Previn's music and his spectacular piano playing. As I wrote in 2014 when I first posted the soundtrack recording, "You will hear echoes of Britten, Khachaturian (!) and Gershwin, Kenton-style stentorian jazz, blues piano, salon music, mood music and much more."

I've now remastered the record, clarifying the sound of the Ibert while doing additional cleaning on the awful M-G-M pressing. You can find the link in the comments both to this post and the original item. 

Back to Hollingsworth: I also have his recording of Constant Lambert's Meyerbeer ballet score, Les Patineurs, which I'll post later on. It's coupled with the first recording of Bliss' Checkmate score, led by Robert Irving.