John Challenger wrote to me as follows: “I’m emailing to ask whether you might consider a review of my most recent release from Salisbury Cathedral – Holst’s The Planets, arranged specially for our beloved Father Willis organ. The project came about through a desire to share Holst’s music with schoolchildren who otherwise might not become acquainted with The Planets, but the project grew to a scale I wasn’t really expecting, and following many performances, workshops and so on, the conclusion of the project is an album release of the full performance, available as audio alone, or as 4K film of the performance, complete with internal drone shots of an empty and atmospheric Salisbury Cathedral.”

I am happy to oblige when the hour-long results are as good as this. The sonics are splendid – the Cathedral’s generous acoustic space and the organ’s wide dynamic and frequency range are faithfully captured – this listener felt he was there – thrillingly, especially on headphones, a media must unless you have a soundproofed listening room or very tolerant neighbours. Challenger’s transcription is mostly successful, virtuoso in itself and in performance – maybe too many notes at times, creating something of an aural fog, perhaps to replicate Holst’s orchestration as fully as possible, although it’s a minor cavil and isn’t unattractive – with this magnificent instrument let loose in, say, ‘Mars’ and ‘Uranus’, powerfully rasping bass lines, roof-raising fortissimos, contrasting with the distance and delectation of the ethereal treble notes of ‘Venus’ and ‘Neptune’, the latter including faraway and nicely faded voices, and not forgetting the finger wizardry required for Mercury’, while ‘Jupiter’ retains its jolly character and the hymn-tune is majestic and stirring.

This enterprising well-produced release should appeal to audiophiles, admirers of Holst’s original score, and of course organ aficionados. The film below will serve as an introduction to Challenger’s achievement.