Gustav Holst as seen in Dalston

Gustav Holst is still an undervalued contributor to English classical music. The Planets remains, quite rightly, one of the 20th century's most popular scores, strongly descriptive and illustrative of how it was possible to incorporate English flavoured folk tunes and some of Stravinsky's more acerbic approaches to harmony and orchestration.

Yet many of Holst's orchestral and vocal works languish relatively unheard, despite a rich discography that includes special performances from the likes of Benjamin Britten, Sir Adrian Boult, Yehudi Menuhin and Richard Hickox. Some of these have been made available again on the Eloquence label, which I shall be covering on this site shortly, and there is a fine documentary now available from Tony Palmer, which was broadcast on BBC4 in April and now available on DVD.

Now Grimeborn, the enterprising two-week chamber opera festival, should be applauded for bringing two of Holst's intriguing small scale stage works in from the sidelines. The charming Arcola Theatre in Dalston proved an ideal sized venue on Saturday night for performances of Savitri and The Wandering Scholar, with Daisy Evans' direction making the most of a space incorporating its audience on three of the four sides, the stage in the middle, in front of the small orchestra pit.

The first half brought us the story of one of Holst's unusual Sanskrit-themed works. This is the Hindu legend from the Mahabharata, where Savitri, the widow of Satyavan, appeals to Yama, the lord of death, for his return. The opera is meant to be performed outside, but here in the early evening the light was just right for Evans to successfully evoke that feeling.

Savitri lasts half an hour and is a taut, deeply felt utterance, the music tense throughout. The plot itself was not always easy to follow in this performance, with some words missed as the singers had to turn around on stage, but the emotion was clearly there from Jenny Stafford's pleas in the title role. Edward Ballard as Death was impressive, too, starting the opera with a folk-inflected melodic line that reminded us just how well Holst could write for unaccompanied voice, while Alex Berman had the measure of the ill-fated Satyavan. The chorus sang in a style predating the wordless music at the end of Neptune in The Planets.

The music was striking throughout, in fact, with Holst choosing a chamber orchestra of 16 to accompany his three vocalists. The instrumental colours were beautifully realised, especially the lean single double bass line that gave a feeling of foreboding whenever it was left on its own, and some of the more graceful wind writing up top was well played too by the members of The Little Opera Company. All three vocalists were fine, and Stafford's closing vocalise mirrored Death's opening, giving an essential bit of hope at the end of a pretty dark story. Colourful costumes helped lighten the mood, too, and Evans' use of two expressive sprites hanging on Death’s every word lent a ghoulish edge.

This proved chalk to the cheese of the second half, which was The Wandering Scholar, Holst's last stage work from 1932 and as English as they come. Here was a precursor to the Carry On films, in the shape of a full figured soprano (Stafford, again) gamely fighting off the affections of a lecherous priest (insert) while the Wandering Scholar himself, an open-faced Nick Scott, gradually took centre stage as he revealed the couple’s supposed misdemeanours. There was a lot of slapstick humour here, and Evans did a great job updating the story for the present day. The dog, hilariously played by (insert), read an edition of Nuts while waiting for the opera to start, scratching himself where he shouldn't, while Stafford, having hidden various props in the audience at the sudden appearance of her husband, commendably kept a straight face as he, Louis (Edward Ballard) hilariously tried to get them back.

Again the music was colourful, vulgar at times, and Imogen Holst's observation that the priest in her father’s opera 'would be short and clammy, would roll gently from side to side as he walks, and that there will be grease stains on his cassock' was totally borne out by the excellent (insert). The tunes were good, the script funny, and, as in the first half, there was next to no musical padding, another observation on the part of Imogen of her father’s ability to keep his music straight and to the point.

A thoroughly invigorating evening, then, with a nicely paired double bill that showed off the talents of those on stage, as well as the ability of Holst to write with flair and originality. Chamber opera established itself in the 20th century, and Holst was certainly one of its first exponents.

An Ode to Olly

Much has been made in the current Proms season of superstar visits from Gustavo Dudamel and Nigel Kennedy – and quite right too, for apart from their mere presence in the Royal Albert Hall they have asked pertinent questions about the music they have been performing.

However there has not been so much noise about an especially valuable asset of British musical life, the conductor and composer Oliver Knussen, whose health happily appears to be much improved these days. His program for Prom 19 with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, of whom he is 'Artist in Association', was characteristically imaginative – and though given to a small audience it strongly emphasised his worth to music from the 20th century and beyond.

Listening again to this Prom on the radio, I was struck by Knussen's easy conversations with Petroc Trelawny about the music. He spoke about Honegger's love of trains before opening with Pacific 231, then the similarity of Pastorale d’été to the theme from Dr Finlay’s Casebook, and later on provided a revealing nugget of how he and the composer Henri Dutilleux were strolling along the sea front at Aldeburgh. After moments of silence Dutilleux looked at the sea and exclaimed, "This is the sea that Debussy had in mind when he wrote La mer."

Such revealing asides helped put the concert in greater context, as did the linking of several threads through the beautifully performed program. We had Alpine scenes from Honegger – unusually relaxed for a piece in the musically reactionary 1920s – and from Castiglioni, whose Inverno in-ver was an extraordinary piece of frostbitten cold for the upper registers of the orchestra, given a bright metallic glare through a battery of percussion.

Fascinating, too, was the vivid Bridge tone poem There is a Willow Grows Aslant a Brook, before the three songs on wine set by Berg to Baudelaire poems, Der Wein showing once again how Knussen and the soprano Claire Booth work so well together.

This was not the first time Knussen had produced a radical program, however – he has been thriving on these sorts of concerts for years. One of the highlights of the 2007 Proms season was his Rite of Spring, coupled with Schoenberg’s Five Orchestral Pieces , the world premiere of his Violin Concerto and Henze’s Sebastian im Traum . That same season he conducted the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, successfully reading the collective minds of the audience by repeating Webern’s Five Orchestral Pieces.

The point of these examples is to show that right now there is nobody quite so bold in their programming as Knussen – and his interpretations offer a composer’s insights to boot, often shedding new light on familiar music or revealing hidden masterpieces, as in the Castiglioni. To watch him conduct is to see somebody completely shunning the spotlight for the music’s sake – and the BBC Symphony Orchestra clearly get as much out of their partnership as he does. More power to his elbow!