Joel Hill wrote: >I am probably the only one on this planet that is not familiar with Holst's >work. I sprung for the 2 piano version on Nazox some time ago, but the >sound was so insistantly LOUD and shrill that I can hardly listen to it. >I think I have heard it twice. Though I haven't heard it, I can't imagine the real power and beauty of this work coming through effectively in a 2-piano version. >Any other input as to the value/enjoyability of this work? It must have >something since it is so popular. Well, it has that whole program music thing going for it, which always helps on the popularity front. Program aside - I tend to like the abstract nature of music - I think it's one of the great cycles of symphonic poems ever written. It easily stands with Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade, Debussy's La Mer, and Smetana's Ma Vlast, for example, as one of the most evocative symphonic works ever written. The use of orchestral color is amazing. I've heard this so often, I'm always leery of burnout, as Don mentioned. But I did hear an outstanding recording of this piece recently. A friend has put together a state-of-the-art home theater system (including a 120" projection TV) with some excellent audio electronics (Madrigal, Proceed, Revel, etc.), fully capable of getting the most out of Dolby Digital (aka AC-3) or DTS (Digital Theater Sound) encoded CDs or DVDs. He's not much of a classical music fan yet (though I continue to try) but I convinced him to buy the Telarc recording of Joel Levi and the Atlanta Symphony released by Image Entertainment on CD, and encoded using DTS. All I can say is: wow. A reviewer in Stereophile called this disc the finest orchestral recording he's ever heard. I won't go that far, but it is amazingly lifelike. DTS is a five channel discrete surround sound system similar to AC-3, but with a higher sampling rate (and therefore less compression) in the surround channels. As anyone familiar with surround sound can tell you, there are a number of perspectives that engineers can take when deciding where the listener is with respect to the instruments of the orchestra. Some recordings put you right in the middle of the orchestra. Some just put instruments as far apart as possible, resulting in that annoying ping pong effect common with early surround sound. The best recordings (IMHO) are those that put you about where the conductor is, or perhaps a little further back and higher up. This gives the listener the orchestral balance and instrumental placement closest to what the conductor intended. This recording of The Planets puts you right out in front of the orchestra, with a very natural side-to-side balance, and excellent depth to the soundstage. You can just hear that wordless chorus float up from the back of the stage when they enter during Uranus. The performance is also wonderful, full of exciting and incisive ensemble playing. This disc can be found at the Image Entertainment web site for $25: http://www.image-entertainment.com/ Or at most online CD retailers (EveryCD has it for $18.39, for example). You will need a system capable of handling DTS decoding to get the most out of it. The regular CD is also available from Telarc. Dave [log in to unmask] http://www.classical.net/