08/03/2024
Celebrate International Women's Day with us on 9th March in St Bartholomew's Church in our concert, Assisted by Angels Women Composers from Bingen to Bingham. We hope to see you there and please join us for a glass of wine after the concert. Tickets on the door: €20, conc. €15, students €5, all including a glass of wine or soft drink afterwards.
Imogen Holst was born in Richmond, Surrey, in 1907 and educated at St Paul’s Girls’ School, where her father, Gustav Holst, was director of music. She worked with Herbert Howells before entering the Royal College of Music in 1926 to study with Ralph Vaughan Williams among others. She gained several awards for composition, In January 1940 Holst was appointed by Sir Walford Davies to be one of six musicians charged with inspiring and organizing musical activities among civilians in rural areas. The scheme, originally funded by the Pilgrim Trust, was taken over by the newly formed Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts, forerunner of the Arts Council of Great Britain. Holst’s region was southwest England where she worked heroically but by July 1942 she was completely exhausted and had to resign. In 1952 Britten asked her to come to Aldeburgh to help with his opera Gloriana, she unhesitatingly accepted. She had first met him and Peter Pears at Dartington in the 1940s, and mutual respect for each other’s musicianship and gifts led to real friendship. She lived in Aldeburgh for the rest of her life, initially working closely with Britten both as his music assistant and for the Aldeburgh Festival, of which she was an artistic director from 1956 to 1977. On her arrival in Suffolk, Pears asked her to form and conduct a chamber choir of young singers in London; with this group, the Purcell Singers, she gave concerts and broadcasts of works ranging from seldom heard medieval music to twentieth century pieces. In 1964 Imogen Holst relinquished her work for Britten to concentrate on the music of Gustav Holst, for which she felt uniquely responsible.
