The Cloud Messenger is a setting, in Holst’s own translation of the Sanskrit, of Meghadūta, a much-admired lyric poem by the fifth-century Indian classical poet and dramatist Kālidāsa. Holst creates a wonderfully pictorial musical canvas which evokes every detail of Kālidāsa’s poetic imagery as the cloud passes over the land: the sweeping movement of the cloud itself; the people and places it passes over as it travels; the musicians and dancers gathering in the sacred city in the Himalayas, their pace gradually becoming more frenetic until the God Shiva himself descends for the Cosmic Dance; and finally the chamber of the beloved, where the cloud delivers the message of love.
Additionally on the program is Frostiana by Randall Thompson, a collection of settings of poems by Robert Frost