The Planets (行星組曲)

The Cultural Centre was spinning with with astrological and astronomical bodies Saturday evening. First we had the sun, then a constellation and ended having a suite of planets.

Carl Nielsen (1865-1931) is the most renowned Danish composer which we seldom hear in the concert halls of Hong Kong. In a sense, its composition was entirely fortuitous. His sculptress wife got a grant to study Greek temples of the Acropolis in Athens and he conceived of the idea of writing the Overture to Helios, Op 17  (the handsome Greek sun god wearing a shining aureole who drove the sun's chariot across the sky each day to Oceanus circling the earth's seas and returning to the East at night)  in March 1903 because everyday he was there, he had to suffer its scorching heat. The piece began very slowly, the steady bass strings scarcely moving to symbolize the rhythm of the almost imperceptible motion of the sun rising above the horizon of the Aegean sea, then we see/hear the rays of the sun as they spread over the golden sea, displaying its radiating splendor, reaching its its zenith in the sky and then slowly and quietly sinking back below the horizon, the way it rose in the evening.



The next piece of the evening was Orion, the name of one of the constellations the composer saw on the night sky, was as unusual and as it was exotic. It came from Canadian composer Claude Vivier (1948-1983), an orphan  who said that the piece was about "Eternal homecoming, as in History with a capital H, which always waits impatiently for the return of its redemptive saints and its dictators. I have the impression that I'm sitting still on an airplane; I remain in the same place and yet I go from Cairo to Kuala Lumpur", referring to the trip to Asia he made in 1979. According to the programme notes,Orion consists of six sections: first the statement of the melody, then its development, followed by second development and then a meditation and a memory of it and finally the same melody broken into two parts but it never quite manages to break the sense of desolation and solitude of the music, full of strange and inexplicable clashes of metallic sound. It  sounds almost as if the different sections of the orchestra were each doing their own thing, rather like jazz, with only local unity and sometimes not even that. 

The last piece of the evening was Gustav Holst (1874-1934)'s most popular work, The Planets Suite, Op 32, a popularity he found most annoying because people never seem to want to know that he has written many other what he regarded as much better compositions. The piece began with Mars, the bringer of War then followed by respectively 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). The first, Mars began right from the start with a strong almost march like rhythm symbolizing constant striving between different forces of the psyche. Venus however, is completely different: instead of war, it was all tender romance and love. Mercury was different again with its swift changes of mood as in the expression "mercurial".  Then it was the turn of Jupiter, the main theme of which, done with full complement of big explosive brass sounds, has sometimes been used as background music of various films, must be the most popular section of this suite. The next, Saturn changes mood again from one of jubilation to that of melancholy and slow rhythm. The suite ends with Neptune, it doesn't have any clear melodic lines but may represent Holst's exploration of the mysteries of the human psyche. It's labeled the Mystic. On that note of mystery, our concert season ends under the baton of guest conductor  David Robertson from America and Florence Cheng as the Chorusmaster who conducted the youth group of the HK Children's Choir. which sang the choral part of the Planetary Suite. Much to the regret of the audience, the chairman of the HKPO announced the retirement of our principal clarinettist Michael Campbell, who has been with the HKPO for 33 years and Igor Yuzefovich our first violinst and concert master for the past two years. The end of the concert season means that we won't have the HKPO until September this year.Well, musicians are human too. They also need a break. May they enjoy themselves during the break doing stuffs they had always wanted to but couldn't find time doing. Let's hope they all return, refreshed.

 .