Originally posted on April 4
Ominous tread informs the opening of ‘Mars’, which takes a while to gather the full force of a war-like machine, and when it does, the LSO dines out as it has many times before in this music (with the extra previous-generational course of being involved with related film scores of John Williams. ‘Venus’ is cool and refined, played serenely yet warmly expressive – really quite lovely – whereas ‘Mercury’ darts around a little quicker than usual, with precision and lightness of touch, and ‘Jupiter’ is buoyant and the hymn-tune noble. If ‘Jupiter’ is the energy of life, and the thanksgiving for it, then ‘Saturn’ is the Grim Reaper stalking victims, the two-note motif unusually dissonant, the pacing generously implacable, held magisterially until crisis erupts, with final radiance transcendent. The dance of ‘Uranus’ is more balletic than can be the case, with the organ glissando well-managed, and ‘Neptune’ emerges as related to ‘Venus’ only remoter and chillier, the vocals from the ladies of Tenebrae suitably ethereal and faded to nothingness. Whether Colin Matthews’s ‘Pluto’ was considered as an appendix I know not, so we are returned to Earth for the rugged, sea-swept Cornwall landscape given an evocative, powerful and expansive outing that can be added to Barbirolli, Boult, Handley, and Lloyd-Jones. Antonio Pappano is a charismatic navigator of the Bax, and, for the Holst, he avoids the garish, the pumped-up, and the obvious. LSO Live LSO0904 [SACD] is released on March 20.