The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

"Explore The Planets as you never have before – on the big screen! The Planets on the Big Screen will feature Gustav Holst’s musical tour-de-force with a newly developed visual accompaniment by Adrian Wyard, produced in collaboration with the University of Arizona’s Peter Smith, principal investigator for the Phoenix Mars Mission. For a preview see http://www.theplanetslive.com. William Walton’s arrangement of Johann Sebastian Bach’s cantatas and chorale preludes for the ballet, The Wise Virgins, is an appropriately buoyant companion piece while Michael Gandolfi navigates through 28 pieces of music from the last 1200 years in his imaginative six-minute Universe Cascade."

My wife and I attended this performance today and it was awesome.
I'm sure I'll be playing the discs in the morning.
You can enjoy some of it via this link via South Dakota PBS broadcast last year.
http://watch.sdpb.org/video/2365487694/
We heard the entire uninterrupted suite. Prior to the performance was a brief talk with Adrain Wyard, Peter Smith and the conductor Mei-Ann Chen.
Love it!

James.

Thanks!

If you ever get a chance to go to a symphony concert and hear The Planets live, you have to go. No stereo can duplicate it like hearing it from a live symphony orchestra. I heard it several years ago from the San Diego Symphony. There are some pieces of music where hearing it live is a revelation. For example, Beethoven's 5th and 9th symphonies, Dvorak's 9th symphony, and believe it or not, Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade

Marc.