Don Satz has:

>very fond memories of The Planets from my childhood days, and it pisses
>me off that other humans just can't seem to keep their grubby hands off
>the composition.

I have mixed feelings about this.  The first version of Tchaikovsky's
Francesca da Rimini I got to know was Stokowski's, and it was some time
before I discovered not only that he'd made some additions to the score,
but that he did this frequently.  I still get a buzz from this version.
However, The Planets was one of my earliest CM discoveries and having
become acclimatised to Boult, I've never been able to take the tam-tam
roll Stokowski added to the closing section of Mars, whatever the merits
of the performance as a whole may have been.

The Hyperion version of The Planets with the extra movement has been
well reviewed, and is organised so you can play just what Holst wrote.  I
haven't seen any reviews of the Naxos version, but that has the advantage
of also containing The Mystic Trumpeter which, AFAIK, has had only one
previous recording on Lyrita (nla).

I don't know whether her parents were Holst enthusiasts, but I know of a
CM recording producer who works for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation
and whose name is Brook Green.

Richard Pennycuick
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