This concert will consist of only one work: Gustav Holst’s The Planets suite, composed between 1914 and 1917. Gustav Holst (1874-1934) was an English composer of mixed Swedish, Latvian and German descent on his father’s side – thus the name. Unable to support himself as a composer, he initially became a professional trombone player, having taken up the instrument in the hope that it would improve his asthma. (He always had poor health, and conducted with his left arm owing to issues with his right.) From 1905 until 1934 he was a teacher at St Paul’s Girls’ School in London, where he pioneered music education for women.
Holst was a shy man, and did not welcome the fame that The Planets brought him in the years immediately after the First World War. Already deeply absorbed in Indian culture and English folk music, he was introduced to astrology – a subject he later referred to as his ‘pet vice’ – during a holiday in Spain in 1913, and it was his interest in the way the various planets affected human psychology that led him to write his famous work.
The Planets consists of seven movements with the following titles: Mars, the Bringer of War; Venus, the Bringer of Peace; Mercury, the Winged Messenger; Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity; Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age; Uranus, the Magician; and Neptune, the Mystic. In the last movement, the orchestra is joined by a female chorus singing wordless music – just as it is in Sirènes, the last movement of Debussy’s Nocturnes.
In this performance, British conductor Howard Griffiths will be conducting the Istanbul State Symphony Orchestra; in Neptune, the Turkish ‘Sirène’ Choir will be conducted by Volkan Akkoç – who, incidentally, founded the choir in 2014. Behind the orchestra will be a screen on which 3D images, animations and pictures of the various planets will appear.
Issue 66, December 2023
Turkey’s Centenary Issue
