Last month, Portland’s Merrill Auditorium exploded into applause as the final notes from the chorus faded into a delicate decrescendo. As a musician for the last 15 years (flute and piccolo), I was secretly hoping the uproarious applause from the sold-out, 2,000-person-capacity concert hall would be enough to warrant an encore from Portland Symphony, which for 80 minutes had performed John Adams’s “Fanfare for Orchestra: Short Ride in a Fast Machine,” John Williams’s “Suite from Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” and the entire 7-movement “Op. 32: The Planets” by Gustav Holst.
Having never heard The Planets performed in its entirety, I felt as though I had transcended upon a unique opportunity. When I mentioned to one of the ushers that I had never heard the entire suite live before, his response was: “Oh, me too! I have chills just thinking about it.”
The Planets Suite, opus 32 is a 7-movement orchestral suite scored for 4 flutes, 2 piccolos, alto flute, 4 oboes, bass clarinet, 4 bassoons, contrabassoon, 6 French horns, 4 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, tenor tuba, timpani (2 players, 2 full sets), percussion, 2 harps, celeste and strings. The suite itself was to have astrological meaning instead of astronomical, which is the reason Earth is not included. “The Planets then, is a work about the human experience,” said Mark Rohr, bass trombonist for the Portland Symphony Orchestra. “Not the cosmic.”
Movement one, “Mars, The Bringer of War,” is the most recognizable. The sound of the strings being beat with the wood on the bow and relentless drumming evokes the feeling of an ominous military persistence.
Movement two, “Venus, The Bringer of Peace,” is a sharp contrast to the urgency of “Mars,” introducing a sense of calm by solo violin. The response melody is followed by solo oboe. The piece as a whole, while serene-like and peaceful, is the very essence of the Roman goddess Venus: “feminine yet tame and without wiles.”
Movement three, “Mercury, The Winged Messenger,” is my favorite movement and in my opinion, one of the most difficult pieces to perform because of the syncopation between instruments: should you be a quarter of a beat off the mark, it throws the entire piece out of sync. A metronome is the musician’s best friend with this piece in particular. As the scherzo for the suite, the music flits back and forth between the instruments. It feels as light as a cosmic butterfly.
Aside from the composer’s intentions, it’s hard to avoid the spirit of the god Jupiter. This Jupiter has no thunderbolts to throw at mere mortals, but a wink and an all-knowing smile. Movement four, “Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity,” is a piece sounding of celebration. Selections of it are best remembered as being performed at the royal wedding of Charles and Diana, while the second verse was performed at Diana’s funeral.
Movement five, “Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age,” is a serene and deliberate piece. It sounds as though the audience can hear Saturn approaching in a steady gait from a distance.
Movement six, “Uranus, the Magician,” is somewhat reminiscent to “Mickey the Sorcerer” in Fantasia. An ominous opening with a playful ending.
“The ethereal opening of ‘Neptune, the Mystic’ [movement seven] brings us to the outer reaches of Holst’s astrological cosmos, and the destination of the suite: the physical world is left behind and we reach the inner workings of the mind. Holst’s portrayal is unsettled, ever searching; the contradictory aspects of human nature are not reconciled here. But perhaps, as the goassmer strands of the wordless chorus drift back into the infinite silence from which they came, they are transcended,” said Mark Rohr.
–Taryn Crane