“Houston, We Have a Problem”
January 28, 2010 at Carnegie Hall, New York, NY
If any orchestra should tour with Holst’s “The Planets”, the Houston Symphony should—due to its relationship with NASA and the Johnson Space Center. But a film experiment directed by Duncan Copp called “The Planets: an HD Odyssey” didn’t work: the space images and video, though extraordinarily clear and beautiful, were too generic for Holst’s mythical descriptions of the planets and our own imaginations that inevitably follow. It was like experiencing an orchestra play James Horner’s riveting music to the film
“Titanic” while watching real under-water pictures of the sunken ship. One is reality; the other delves into story-telling.
In the future, a few actual stills of a planet could be shown at the beginning of each movement of the suite, and the remainder should focus on the music and the orchestra with the lights up (the players were hardly visible). In terms of future video accompaniment, I’d rather watch close-ups of the Houston performers playing this fantastically detailed score. On the other hand, the Houston Symphony, which sounded less-than-stellar in “The Planets”, might want to make some changes; there were several unclear attacks and missed notes from the trumpets and horns, and the playing as a whole lacked tonal refinement and a robust symphonic sound. The orchestra’s music director, Hans Graf, led light, airy performances of Stravinsky’s “Scherzo fantastique” and “Fireworks”, which book-ended the program, and Dutilleux’s “Timbres, espace, mouvement, ou La Nuit etoilee” was given a dedicated performance, with the orchestra’s fine cello and bass sections sounding strong and well-blended.
