Classical Music: Holst & Bax

Holst: The Planets – Bax: Tintagel

London Symphony Orchestra.
Tenebrae. Antonio Pappano
LSO Live LSO0904

https://lsolive.lso.co.uk/

Antonio Pappano and the London Symphony Orchestra make an impressive case for The Planets on this new LSO Live release, bringing to Holst's visionary suite both interpretative authority and the kind of orchestral finish that makes every movement feel freshly considered.

Mars opens with the relentless momentum of a war machine gathering terrible pace, the LSO's players bristling with controlled ferocity. The transition to Venus offers an immediate change of atmosphere — solar warmth radiating through strings and woodwind with a tenderness that feels genuinely inhabited rather than merely applied. Mercury flits past at a tempo fractionally brisker than many rivals, yet this proves entirely apt: quicksilver music demands quicksilver execution. Jupiter arrives with Pappano in full, generous flight; the magnificent central melody— Elgarian in its broad, ceremonial sweep—is given room to breathe and sing without tipping into bombast.

Saturn unfolds with particular distinction. That hypnotic two-note ostinato draws the listener into a vast, encompassing stillness, the strings tracing slow arabesques through an ether of mounting unease; woodwind contributions add texture and shadow before Uranus erupts with theatrical suddenness. The percussion here is superbly calibrated—the dynamics are judged with precision—and the organ interjection registers with a magnificence that briefly illuminates the whole before subsiding, as if a door to another world had been opened and quietly closed. Neptune dissolves into the sublime, the 24 ladies of Tenebrae weaving a wordless, wraithlike choral veil that the engineers capture with exceptional transparency: mysteriously distant, yet perfectly present.

Arnold Bax's Tintagel provides an earthly coda of considerable distinction. Inspired by the Cornish headland in 1917, the symphonic poem conjures windswept cliffs and the surge of the Atlantic with music that alternates between brooding introspection and surging climax. The LSO's precision never inhibits expressive spontaneity — a haunting wistfulness threads through the quieter passages, while the magnificent culminating wave of sound, when it arrives, is thrilling. Arthurian legend and coastal grandeur are magnificently fused.

An outstanding release from first bar to last.