The Daily Spin, June 22
Gustav Holst | The Planets
Welcome back to the Daily Spin, the series in which I review 365 albums during 2023.
Each album will be given a rating on a scale from 0 to 10. You can look at the entire set here. Additionally, you can check out a list of my favorite song from each album right here.
If you want to suggest an album, good news! You can do so right here!
Album: The Planets (1918)
Artist: Gustav Holst
Link:
As performed by the Berlin Philharmonic in 1981, this is Gustav Holst’s wartime baby - first begun in 1914, then worked on through the duration of World War I until its completion and first publication in 1918 (funnily enough, prior to the discovery of Pluto).
What I love so much about this music is that can feel how its influence has trickled through into modern orchestral music, its own power notwithstanding.
The obvious title fighter is, appropriately, the king of the gods, Jupiter, a bombastic string and brass section that steps away to float and flutter, instrumental brackets volleying together before the stampeding low horns return. It’s three minutes in, though, that inevitably calls goosebumps to the surface of my skin, the first time that those strings call to their king, the rest of the instruments falling into line to hail to the processional march. You get brief moments where those fluttering woodwinds and higher strings dash around the soundscape, but it all comes back to a head with one final call to that iconic rise at the seven-minute mark, one last titanic statement as everything around it levitates into majestic frenzy.
My other favorite that I want to call out to is Neptune, mostly because every time I listen to this one I can hear the Harry Potter and Star Wars soundtracks. Now, I can’t lay claim to John Williams having been influenced by this, but you’d be hard-pressed to tell me otherwise, the way that Neptune in particular claims this very ethereal air to it, almost magical in a way. It feels of another world in a way that other songs from the suit don’t - it’s the same hopeful woodwinds that back each hero of the Star Wars universe as they first begin to take those daunting steps into the galaxy, the first sweeping strings that flutter around an eleven-year old Harry Potter as he feels the rush of magic through his hand that first time in the wand shop.
It’s not a perfect instrumental suite - I do feel that some of the arrangements would benefit greatly from being about a third of the length, but that’s also Holst’s style, in essence, so I’m unsure whether to be harsh because of it. Regardless, the highs of this album are gorgeous, and if nothing else, it’s worth a listen for that.
Rating: 8.2/10
Best Tracks: Jupiter; Neptune
Worst Tracks: Venus