Search - Gustav Holst, Maurice Ravel, Lorin Maazel :: Holst: The Planets; Ravel: Boléro

Five stars for Maazel's "Planets" recording

Alan Majeska | Bad Axe, MI, USA | 10/08/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Lorin Maazel (born 1930) recorded Holst's symphonic cycle "The Planets" with the Orchestre National de France for CBS (now Sony Classical) in 1981. The release I have is the first CD release, from 1985, and it is terrifying in wide dynamic range and brilliance. (This release, coupled with Ravel's "Bolero" was issued several years after the issue I refer to, which has no disc-mate.) When I first obtained this disc nearly 20 years ago, I had never heard anything like it: the percussion and low brass ripple and make an incredible sound in climaxes, especially of I, "Mars, the Bringer of War" and VI, "Uranus, the Magician."



Maazel likes great contrasts in sound and texture, but he does not overdo anything, and the result is Holst's famous and oft recorded cycle very well played, layed out in great style for the listener. If the opening of "Mars" seems tame, look out: you're in for a shock, and a wild ride. The ostinato motif goes on and on, crescendoing and diminuendoing all over the place, until after several minutes you're wanting to say "ENOUGH ALREADY, I SURRENDER!" Holst actually wrote this movement shortly before World War I (1914-18) not as a political or social statement, but to depict the senselessness and brutality of war, represented by the Roman god Mars.



I liked this recording of Holst's "The Planets" very much. If you aren't a fan of Lorin Maazel, French orchestras recording English music, or early digital recordings, there are other options: Dutoit/Montreal (Decca); Mehta/Los Angeles (Decca Eloquence); Lloyd-Jones/Scottish National Orchestra (Naxos); Bernstein/New York (Sony). Avoid Karajan/Berlin (DG) which is all digital but has odd tempos and balances: Karajan's Decca recording made with the Vienna Philharmonic in the 1960s was much better."

A Drunken Mess

sunspot42x | San Francisco, CA | 05/25/2009

(2 out of 5 stars)

"I can't comment on Maazel's Bolero, but I had this Holst recording on LP, when it first came out in the early 1980's. It's been long since stolen - I replaced it with Telarc's Andre Previn recording, which I honestly don't like any better, for different reasons.



In a way I sort of miss the drunken, out of tune Mars from this recording, but it is rather a mess and the tempo is far, far too slow. Things improve from there, but after ruining Holst's most famous piece there's really nowhere to go but up.



(Holst's own recordings came in at about six minutes, as did his piano score with the tempo explicitly specified. Virtually *every* recording of this work drags in comparison to Holst's specified tempos. And it's not just Mars - Jupiter, Mercury, even the quieter pieces like Neptune are routinely played far, far too slow. Holst himself recorded the entire suite a couple of times, and I think it came at around 51 minutes, total - which would probably make them the shortest recordings of The Planets ever created!)



I will say, for some reason - the performance, the acoustics, I don't know what - I still love the quieter pieces from Maazel's recording. And the dynamic range on this thing is absolutely incredible, especially on Uranus, which surprisingly features the loudest sequence on the album (you'd think Mars or Jupiter, but you'd be wrong). I remember trying to record this thing on cassette - on metal tape no less - back in the early '80s, and having to ride the levels to keep it from totally saturating. And that was off of LP. The CD must be a real speaker blower.



The recording is a bit echo-laden, as was the (somewhat dated and about to be unfashionable) style at the time. Must have been recorded in a huge space. Impressive, but it also muddies and slurs performances which already sound a bit off-kilter, though that might be another reason why the slower pieces have a delightfully ethereal quality to them.



There are better recordings. I'm probably going to be replacing my Telarc recording with David Lloyd-Jones conducting the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. The acoustics sound good, from what I can determine online, and they get the tempos mostly right. And they sound like they bothered to tune their instruments and not show up to the recording drunk.



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