Description
The idea for The Planets was born whilst the English composer Gustav Holst (1874-1934) was on holiday in Majorca in 1913. At that time Holst was keen to produce a large-scale symphonic piece and when his friend, Clifford Bax, introduced Holst to astrology he had his subject matter. He finished the first sketch of Mars at the outbreak of the First World War and completed the suite of what Holst called ‘mood pictures’ in 1916. The suite has seven movements, each named after a planet and its corresponding astrological character.
Prior to its first complete public performance in 1920 all but one of the suite’s individual movements had been given public airings, despite Holst’s opposition to part-performances – and especially those that finished off with the upbeat Jupiter because, he explained, “in the real world, the end is not happy at all”. With due apologies to Holst (!), two of the suite’s most popular movements are arranged here for wind quintet and piano by Lisa Portus, beginning with Mars, the Bringer of War and finishing with Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity.
The full suite is available here.
And here’s a very fine performance of Jupiter by the Tokyo Sextet:
