Guest conductor Gemma New proved to be a vigorous and expressive leader.
The Houston Symphony has had a fruitful relationship with The Planets for a while. About a decade ago, the orchestra drew widespread acclaim by pairing Gustav Holst’s astrologically minded 1914-17 suite, a symphony in all but name, with footage captured by NASA spacecraft. Holiday alert: DVD/Blu-Ray copies of the result, “The Planets: An HD Odyssey,” are still available in the Houston Symphony Store.
The program opened with a British composer of more recent vintage, the U.S. premiere of Alissa Firsova’s Bride of the Wind. Firsova, also a noted pianist, based the piece on a painting of the same name by the late Oskar Kokoschka. It amounts to an aural account of his affair with Gustav Mahler’s widow, Alma: alternating between passionate eruptions and pockets tranquility or unease, eventually settling into a placid stillness and certain wistfulness by the closing bars.
A banquet of orchestral textures and colors, The Planets is one of those pieces that people hear a lot though they may not know it: the suite, for which Holst assigned each planet characteristics as described in the works of noted Victorian-era astrologer Alan Leo, was a profound influence on John Williams’ score for the “Star Wars” films. “Star Trek” too, for that matter.
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