Holst's The Planets

[Peter Power Pop]

//
He's back! He's back in the saddle again... (sung to the Aerosmith tune  )

Sarge

Is that me? Am I the expert? Oh no, no, no, no.

[Peter Power Pop]

The Power is back. Let there be light !

Oh dear. It's a good thing I don't suffer from a Messiah Complex. (I'm not complex enough.)

[Peter Power Pop]

I have a recording of Holst's The Planets, and in Neptune, the celesta plays an octave lower than usual. This recording (RSNO/Lloyd-Jones) has Colin Matthews' Pluto added to the end. ...

(The recording: https://play.spotify.com/album/7DsgQFe4tzxtyzxI64pedD)

I'm not so sure about the celesta being played an octave lower. I don't have a celesta handy to check (plus I'm not a keyboard player), but in its first appearance (0:55-1:02) I'm hearing lower notes, but they may just be the lower notes of the chords. I can't actually hear the written higher notes. Maybe the recording highlighted the lower notes and didn't do a good job of picking up the higher ones. (Or maybe my ears are faulty.)

Anyway, when the celesta reappears (1:41-2:16) it does sound a bit lower than what's written. (In the first two bars of its reappearance I could hardly hear it.) But I don't know if it's played at a lower octave, or if it's simply the tonal qualities of the instrument itself (a special basso profundo celesta?). It's all a bit perplexing.

My official answer is: Er, dunno.

... Is the octave-lower celesta a "difference" of this version compared to the one without Pluto, in the way that Matthews keeps a violin note to segue into Pluto? Or is it just an oddity with this specific performance/recording?

I'll go with "Yes".

Can I have easier questions please?

[Christo]

Is that me? Am I the expert? Oh no, no, no, no.

[Peter Power Pop]

After a delay of what feels like months (mainly because it has been months), my Planets CD guide finally has a new addition in the form of a review of Hilary Davan Wetton's unhelpfully rare recording from 1989:

Hilary Davan Wetton, London Philharmonic Orchestra, 1989

[vandermolen]

I agree with you about the Sargent recording - possibly my favourite version. He was underrated as a conductor. His Sibelius Symphony 5 is my favourite version of that work and his recording of Walton's First Symphony is excellent; I prefer it to the more highly regarded Previn RCA version.

[Sergeant Rock]

After a delay of what what feels like months (mainly because it has been months), my Planets CD guide finally has a new addition in the form of a review of Hilary Davan Wetton's unhelpfully rare recording from 1989:

Congratulations on finding the elusive CD, and thank you for the review and YouTube vids. I especially like this Mars. Awesome indeed.

Sarge

[Peter Power Pop]

Congratulations on finding the elusive CD, and thank you for the review and YouTube vids. ...

You're entirely welcome, young Sarge.

... I especially like this Mars. Awesome indeed.

Sarge

I think the disc is worth buying for "Mars" alone. Oo-wee, that's a great "Mars".

[Peter Power Pop]

A new review on Peter's Planets. This time it's Sir Malcolm Sargent's live recording with the BBC Symphony Orchestra from 1965:

https://petersplanets.wordpress.com/2015/01/01/sargent-1965/

[mc ukrneal]

You're entirely welcome, young Sarge.

I think the disc is worth buying for "Mars" alone. Oo-wee, that's a great "Mars".

Too dull - drags. Not precise - poor unison. Then some poor intonation. Ugh. Terrible. Glad you found it, but boy you and I do not see eye to eye on The Planets...

[Peter Power Pop]

You're entirely welcome, young Sarge.

I think the disc is worth buying for "Mars" alone. Oo-wee, that's a great "Mars".

Too dull - drags. Not precise - poor unison. Then some poor intonation. Ugh. Terrible. Glad you found it, but boy you and I do not see eye to eye on The Planets...

Variety in opinions. Excellent.

I'm just glad there's a huge range of interpretations out there to cater for everyone's tastes.

If you prefer a zippier "Mars", then I can thoroughly recommend either William Steinberg or Roy Goodman.

[mc ukrneal]

Variety in opinions. Excellent.

I'm just glad there's a huge range of interpretations out there to cater for everyone's tastes.

If you prefer a zippier "Mars", then I can thoroughly recommend either William Steinberg or Roy Goodman.

I think I was the one (or one of several) who recommended the Steinberg to you in the first place! It isn't the speed per se, it's the way it is played. Slow and ominous are fine and can be very effective, but this seems unfocused. My problem most of all is with the strings (and then second, how they play with the brass).

[PerfectWagnerite]

Variety in opinions. Excellent.

I'm just glad there's a huge range of interpretations out there to cater for everyone's tastes.

If you prefer a zippier "Mars", then I can thoroughly recommend either William Steinberg or Roy Goodman.

If you prefer a zippier interpretation you go and get this one:



Not the best performance in terms of execution but you can tell everyone is having fun.

[amw]

I read Peter's entire blog because I appreciate people who enable my OCD. Thanks.

Based on his reviews, and some timings, I figured this would probably be one of my favourite recordings of the Planets.


It certainly might be, not that I've heard a lot of them. It definitely at least makes the Planets seem like ~*~Good Music~*~ and nobody's trying to show off. Appreciate that.

[Peter Power Pop]

I read Peter's entire blog because I appreciate people who enable my OCD. Thanks.

Wow. I admire your fortitude / stamina / stick-with-it-a-tude, AMW. Thanks for taking the time to read my nonsense.

Based on his reviews, and some timings, I figured this would probably be one of my favourite recordings of the Planets.


It certainly might be, not that I've heard a lot of them. It definitely at least makes the Planets seem like ~*~Good Music~*~ and nobody's trying to show off. Appreciate that.

I recommend the Ozawa Planets to anyone and everyone. I think it's astonishingly good. Once I had listened to it a few times, I was tempted to make it number one, and it got that close. In the end, though, the sentimental favourite (Hello, Montréal!) won out.

But depending on the day, the Ozawa Planets can easily sit alongside Dutoit and His Merry Montréallers.

[PerfectWagnerite]

But depending on the day, the Ozawa Planets can easily sit alongside Dutoit and His Merry Montréallers.

The Ozawa is essentially the same orchestra as the John Williams I posted earlier. Let's get serious, the OSM is a nice ensemble but doesn't even come close to the BSO.

[amw]

Wow. I admire your fortitude / stamina / stick-with-it-a-tude, AMW. Thanks for taking the time to read my nonsense.

Thanks for writing! I had no issue with it. I find complete lists of things very satisfying for some reason.

Only reason I haven't done the same kind of thing for like the Schubert String Quintet or Brahms 3 or whatever is because I just... run out of things to write a lot more quickly apparently.

I recommend the Ozawa Planets to anyone and everyone. I think it's astonishingly good.

I lost basically all my enthusiasm for the Planets when I was about 14 years old and was like "god these are so overblown and film sounding" (and maybe in Karajan's recording they totally were, I'm not sure. Have to find it somewhere). As far as performances go the Ozawa recording did kinda make me go "wait this is actually good" and hear lots of really interesting things in the music.

Basically see what you mean re it sounding like Ravel. To be completely fair, the Planets is at a baseline very similar to Ravel, except louder and somewhat simpler in construction (and less motivically integrated). The classic Ozawa-Boston clarity though makes the loudness sound much better orchestrated and clearer (therefore more Ravelian), reveals the structure to be somewhat less simple, and at least tries to pretend the motivic construction/derivation is more natural and less glaringly obvious.
<_<

I generally like the recordings Ozawa made in Boston a lot. High quality partnership. Sort of like what Pierre Boulez ought to have been in general. >_>

[Cato]

Interesting: right now I am playing The Planets (one per class) for my Seventh Graders in Latin.  They are supposed to deduce which god/goddess from the music.  The students this year are rather enthusiastic about the work.

The CD I have is a concert recording with Colin Davis and the London Symphony Orchestra.  It is a good recording, and becomes better with the the last 3 movements.

[PerfectWagnerite]

Am I the only one who think the opening brass fanfare in Uranus sounds just like the beginning of Puccini's Turandot?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZn_FGQmlVQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FK_QkS6uZeE

So it seems like our Italian friend copied off our British one?

[André]

You never know, but IMHO chances are infinitesimal. The Planet's first outing in public was in 1920. Puccini died in 1924. He had started work on Turandot shortly after Fanciulla. He never travelled to England during that period. We don't know when the premiere of The Planets took place in Italy, let alone if Puccini attended it (he was overworked and sick with cancer at the time).