Holst Planets in a Multi-Media Extravaganza - Houston Symphony at Carnegie Hall

Last night, Hans Graf and the Houston Symphony Orchestra gave a spectacular presentation of the symphonic suite, "The Planets," by Gustav Holst, at Carnegie Hall.  What made it spectacular was not so much the performance itself, although that was fine enough for the occasion, but rather the collaboration of filmmaker Duncan Copp, whose deftly arranged films on each of the depicted planets, a blend of still photography, motion film, CGI and animation, combined with the music to present a very effective esthetic experience.

This occupied the entire second half of the concert, and virtually effaced memories of the first half.  They began with Igor Stravinsky's early Scherzo fantastique, Op. 3, a bit of Rimsky-Korsakoffian fluff that is delicious going down but does not linger on the palate.  Then came Henri Dutilleux's somewhat dreary "Timbres, espace, mouvement, our La Nuit etoilee," written for Rostropovich and the Washington National Symphony in the 1970s, and making that point (i.e., the Rostro dedication) by omitting violins and violas, resulting in an orchestra even darker and more grim than the one Brahms deployed in his second serenade (omitting violins).  I found myself tuning out from this piece rather quickly, and so can't really say how well it was played.

But "The Planets" was another story entirely.  This is a work of sheer genius.  Holst wrote many other fine things, especially the two suites for concert band and plenty of fine short pieces for chamber orchestra, but nothing else by him that I have heard comes close to matching the sheer inspiration of "The Planets."  Anybody hearing it played complete for the first time is likely to think they've heard bits of it before, and they probably have, because it has been liberally raided by Hollywood film composers over the past century.  So why not go all the way and use the entire piece as a live soundtrack for a visual exploration of our solar system?  Prior to the performance, they showed a brief film with comments from staff from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, most of the comments forgettable in my view, but it did set the stage for a different kind of experience.  The stage lights were doused, the musicians using carefully shielded lamps on their music stands, with a tight spot on conductor Graf, so the full magnificence of the film projected on a large screen overhead could be appreciated by the audience.

Mr. Copp's achievement is not just the artful blend of material from different sources to convey a tour of the planets, but also his undertanding of the rhythm of the music and his ability through cutting and camera movement to match that rhythm with the rhythm and pace of his film.  Rarely was there any sense of discontinuity.

As to the orchestra's performance: It seemed compromised at times by the conditions under which it was being performed.  Full-time symphony players are not used to playing in the dark with a film being projected over their heads, and occasional imprecisions might be put down to these circumstances.  There were a few times when I wished we had a more premium-quality band on the stage.  At any time there are a handful of orchestral horn players in the world who can really project the daunting solo moments in this piece with firm confidence, and last night the Houston horn section had their occasional stumbles.  Some balances were also questionable, especially in Jupiter where the Houston strings sounded a bit overwhelmed by the powerful brass section.  But overall the players acquitted themselves with honor, and Graf's leadership pulled them through many challenging spots. 

The tumultuous audience response drew an appropriate encore, Stravinsky's early "Fireworks," brilliantly rendered.

In all my decades of New York concertgoing, I do  believe this is the first time I've ever heard a complete live performance of "The Planets," a work that deserves to be in the standard repertory of our major orchestras.  Why doesn't it get played more often, when it is among the most popular classical pieces for audiophile recording?  I think the technical challenges of the piece are daunting.  It is big (about 50 minutes or so), requires a super-large early 20th century romantic orchestra, and is as demanding on the wind soloists as any Mahler symphony.  But it is really more audience-friendly than any of the Mahler symphonies, yet is not heard anywhere nearly as frequently.  Hereby a bid for our supervirtuoso orchestras to bring this piece to New York from time to time -- the Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Los Angeles orchestras.  And yes, the NY Philharmonic should rip into this frequently.  I want to hear those primo NY wind soloists in this piece!  In the meantime, memories of this fine Houston performance, with its haunting planetary images, will linger in my imagination.

Comments

[Bunny]

Although I was in the Hall with you, I didn't hear the same concert. I heard a second tier orchestra valiantly trying to play music just a little too difficult for their talent. The visual part of the evening, while interesting at first, seemed to stretch on without relating to the music. While each element individually was done well enough (performance issues aside), the marriage of sound to image was not present. It's not enough to take music that has the name "Venus" and match it to images of a planet that has nothing to do with the thematic intents of the music. (A better pairing would have been various images of the Goddess Venus in art.) There was no interplay, no matching dynamism between the images and music. It became a giant screen saver running to Holst's music.

I kept remembering Kubrick's memorable Blue Danube Waltz from 2001: A Space Odyssey, and this presentation came up sorely lacking. Images of deep space, revealed by both NASA and the Hubble Telescope, present the infinite. Holst's music presents the earthbound, anthropomorphized finite -- a visualization of space that even its time was already discarded.

A note on your comment that The Planets is a major work that deserves to be part of the standard repertoire of modern symphony orchestras: The Planets has become a favorite with audiophiles for testing the limits of audio reproduction of sophisticated sound systems. This is because of it's great dynamic range. The same audiophiles also use music from the Dave Matthews Band, the 1812 Overture (only with real cannons), and the sound tracks of their favorite movies for the same reasons. If you go into stores such as Harvey's or Best Buy, you may also find copies of the Planets used to demonstrate sound systems. This doesn't make Holst's music equal to Mahler, Wagner, Bach or Beethoven.

[Art Leonard]

I didn't say The Planets was "the equal" of Mahler, Wagner, Bach or Beethoven. I said it was a great piece that deserves to be in the standard repertory. It uses the full range of the modern symphony orchestra, contains memorable tunes, ingenious orchestral effects, and rhythmic and emotional variety. It's more interesting to me than many works that have remained ensconced in the standard repertory.

As to the Houston Symphony's performance, opinions may differ, but I thought they did a great job with the piece and I only found a few points to fault, particularly in the brass sections where they did not have the kind of security you hear with the NY Philharmonic. I thought I made that point clear in my original blogpost.

As to the film, I thought the filmmaker did capture the rhythm of the piece and incorporated it effectively in his editing of the film. Perhaps I was just more receptive to what he was trying to do than than the commenter above.

It's all opinion, anyway.

[Bunny]

I think the Planets is a fun piece, much like very rich chocolate: best savored in very small pieces.

I didn't mean to suggest that you think that Holst is the equal of Mahler, et al. But the Planets is a very long piece: only think of what would not be played in order to make room for the full work! I'd rather pay to hear 15 minutes of Holst and an hour of Mahler, than fifteen minutes of Mahler and an hour of Holst.

I also feel this would have been better if shown at the Hayden Planetarium where the images are projected on the dome while viewers recline comfortably in their seats. Carnegie Hall is about sound, not visuals. If the sound isn't top notch it really doesn't matter what you are looking at.

[Art Leonard]

I don't know about other cities, but in New York over the past decade or more, the regular season programs by both our local Philharmonic and most visiting orchestras are heavily devoted to repeating over and over again the core standard orchestral repertory. My suggestion is not that The Planets should be performed in New York every year. It is that the work should become part of that rotation of standard works that gets played with some frequency, rather than remain a rarity in our concert halls.

The program by the Pittsburgh Symphony that I commented on a few days after the Houston Symphony concert was all too typical: Brahms Violin Concerto and Mahler 1st Symphony. Both of those works are played in New York virtually every season, sometimes multiple times. I enjoyed the Pittsburgh concert, but it would be just as well were one of the pieces on the program something less frequently played. We need to expand the active repertory to keep it fresh.