The Planets

Holst, Gustav

album cover

Movie Music Wthout the Movie

The seven movements of The Planets correspond to the seven planets of the solar system (besides Earth) known to humanity when British composer Gustav Holst finished this, his most famous orchestral piece, in 1916. Not only was recently demoted Pluto still undiscovered (that happened in 1932), but there wasn't any satellite photography. So to evoke the faraway realms that have intrigued so many through the centuries, Holst (1874–1934) relied on his formidable imagination, with an assist from Greek mythology. Each of the movements is named for a planet, and subtitled according to its attributes—Mars, for example, is the "Bringer of War."

Don't expect any celestial Space Mountain tinkling here. Using unlikely combinations of instruments and odd openended chords splayed out across the ensemble, Holst describes vast fantastical horizons, emphasizing tone and temperament. "Mars" is tense, with a march cadence bubbling under the surface and hell breaking loose above it. "Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age," is even more ambiguous; low brass in its nearly ten-minute Adagio offer intimations of great portent against the faint tick from a faraway clock. "Mercury" spreads an eerie theme over high-pitched woodwinds and celeste to suggest the sounds you'd hear in an upper atmosphere very different from that of Earth.

William Steinberg's reading of The Planets plays up the sense of abstract exploration—he moves with the steadiness of an aerial photographer, surveying lots of territory, guiding the pliant orchestra over grandiose hills and valleys. It might seem like folly to expect people who grew up in an age of space exploration to be wowed by Holst's interplanetary daydreaming—after all, we know what these planets look like now. But Steinberg and the Boston celebrate the mysteries, transporting listeners to a time when space was the great unknown, and humans, even ones like Holst with colossal imaginations, mere flyspecks.

Genre: Classical
Released: 1971, Deutsche Grammophon
Key Tracks: "Mercury," "Saturn," "Mars."
Another Interpretation: Leonard Bernstein: Bernstein Conducts Holst, Barber, Elgar
Catalog Choice: Choral Symphony, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (Hilary Davan Wetton, cond.)
Next Stop: Hector Berlioz: Symphonie fantastique
Book Pages: 364–365