Don Satz wrote of The Planets:

>It has quite a lot: excellent melodies which are easy to absorb, a nice
>variety of music, and most of all, a musical connection for each planet
>included in the work.  If a listener can identify with the matching of
>music for a particular planet, you've got a winner.
>
>Having said the above, I don't own a single version of The Planets.  I
>heard it so many times when growing up that I still don't have any urge
>to hear it further - maybe a few years from now.  It's not deep music,
>and the "other-worldly" aspect of the work decreases with time.

I usually find myself in agreement with Don, but I feel he's shortchanging
The Planets somewhat.  It was one of the works that first got me interested
in CM and I think I own more versions of it than of any other work.  I was
intrigued at the time to find that the "big" tune in Jupiter was one I'd
learnt in primary (elementary/insert appropriate adjective) school as a
song.

Even after all these years, I can still feel a chill at the menace of Mars,
a sense of exhilaration at the end of Jupiter and all the other emotions I
get from this great work.  I remember many years ago I played Saturn to my
brother-in-law in the dark and he needed a very stiff drink to recover.
And the orchestration is, I think, just fabulous.

After hearing and buying quite a few versions, including Stokowski's with
a tam-tam roll at the end of Mars (sacrilege!) and Andre Previn's for which
I still have a soft spot and Karajan's clinical DG version (but at least he
recorded it), I think Boult is the man who owned this piece.  I still love
his 1950s version, originally on Nixa, which sounds its age but still packs
a wallop, and I like almost as much his last version which EMI has sensibly
coupled with the Enigma Variations.  If you wanted someone to conduct for
your life, Boult would be an excellent choice.  While I'm glad of the
recordings he made, it's a great pity he was largely ignored for so many
years.

Don doesn't regard it as deep music.  I think that depends on the
individual.  It's deep for me in the sense that it presses some emotional
buttons, but not in the same way that, to take probably the obvious
example, Mahler's 9th does.  Or the slow movement of the Beethoven Quartet
15.  Or...you get the idea.  OTOH, I can sympathise with Don hearing it
once too often.  But when I think of some I've heard too often - Bolero
and Sheherezade come inevitably to mind - I'll take The Planets any day!

One small point I'd like to raise.  The "big" tune I mentioned is in the
same tradition as the Pomp and Circumstance Marches, the Walton coronation
marches and so on - my favourite of the genre is Walton's Granada Prelude.
Any tune like this I automatically think of as noble and English, although
I always find the Last Night of the Proms crowd singing Land of Hope and
Glory very OTT.  Do others feel the same resonance, or are they just tunes
with no particular associations?

Richard Pennycuick
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