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User:Simon the Likable/The Planets (Premieres)

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The Planets (Premieres) ...

  • The private orchestral premiere of The Planets suite, conducted at Holst's request by Adrian Boult, was held at rather short notice on 29 September 1918, during the last weeks of World War I, in the Queen's Hall with the financial support of Holst's friend and fellow composer Balfour Gardiner. It was hastily rehearsed; the musicians of the Queen's Hall Orchestra first saw the complicated music only two hours before the performance, and the choir for "Neptune" was recruited from pupils from St Paul's Girls' School (where Holst taught). Despite the auspicious venue, it was a comparably intimate affair, attended by around 250 invited associates.[1][2][3]
  • An ecstatically-received public concert was given in London on 27 February 1919[4] while Holst was overseas, but only five of the seven movements were played (Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus).[2]
  • Two performances of only three movements (Venus, Mars and Jupiter) were given in London on 22 November and 14 December 1919.
  • There was an incomplete public performance in Birmingham on 10 October 1920,[5] with five movements (Mars, Venus, Mercury, Saturn and Jupiter) conducted by Appleby Matthews.
  • The first complete public performance of the suite did not occur until 15 November 1920; the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) was conducted by Albert Coates.

Holst conducted the LSO himself, in two recorded performances of The Planets: the first was an acoustic recording made in sessions between 1922 and 1924 (now available on Pavilion Records' Pearl label); the second was made in 1926, and utilised the then-new electrical recording process (in 2003, this was released on compact disc by IMP and later on Naxos outside the US).[6] Because of the time constraints of the 78rpm format, the tempi are often much faster than is usually the case today.

Talk

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Richard Greene's Holst: The Planets (Cambridge Uni Press, 1995) gives a "good, though [potentially] incomplete" chronology of all public performances of Holst's music from 1915 to 1921. It supports the article's current coverage of the premieres of The Planets, however it also mentions two additional incomplete performances (Venus, Mars, Jupiter) in late 1919 (22 Nov & 14 Dec). I have added these to the article, and will endeavor to flesh these out with more detail at some point.
Greene's book also gives a list of reviews of early performances of The Planets, along with Greene's assessment of whether they were positive or negative (on, essentially, a five-point scale). I have summarised this data here by counting the notices in each class (excluding any explicitly identified as previews):
Performance Extremely
negative		 Negative Neutral
or Mixed		 Positive Extremely
positive		 TOTAL
27 Feb 1919, London (Ma, Me, Sa, Ur, Ju) – 6 5 9 – 20
22 Nov 1919, London (Ve, Me, Ju) – 3 4 5 – 12
10 Oct 1920, Birmingham (Ma, Ve, Me, Sa, Ju) – 2 2 4 – 8
15 Nov 1920, London (full suite) 2 1 2 8 5 18

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References

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  1. ^ "The Definitive CDs" (CD 94), of Holst: The Planets (with Elgar: Enigma Variations), Norman Lebrecht, La Scena Musicale, 1 September 2004, webpage: Scena-Notes-100-CDs.
  2. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference Imogen was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ "'Sir Adrian Boult' on divine-art.com".
  4. ^ Greene (1995), p. 88
  5. ^ Greene (1995), p. 89
  6. ^ HOLST: Planets (The) (Holst) / VAUGHAN WILLIAMS: Symphony No. 4 (Vaughan Williams) (1926, 1937) at Naxos.com
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