On the whole, David Lloyd-Jones and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra turn in a more satisfying and characterful performance of The Planets plus Pluto than we heard on Hyperion's disc containing the latter's premiere, but even these players fail to make the case for Colin Matthews' pointless, ugly, unmusical appendix to Holst's masterpiece. Not only does Pluto fail to flow logically or emotionally from what has come before, it disrupts Holst's carefully planned musical structure of seven movements having Jupiter as its fulcrum (if he had wanted eight movements in his own lifetime, the composer just as easily could have included Earth). At least Hyperion gave listeners the choice of playing the work as Holst intended, an option unfortunately not offered here.

As for what Holst actually wrote, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra has the work under its skin. The ensemble made a good earlier recording with Alexander Gibson for Chandos, and it doesn't disappoint in this newer outing. Lloyd-Jones presides over a fast but aptly menacing Mars (the big-toned bass trombone from Gibson's performance still in evidence), followed by a slightly droopy Venus (a minute slower than Boult's last recording, for example). Mercury has the necessary quicksilver pep, and Jupiter gives the band's excellent horns a chance to shine.

Lloyd-Jones builds a tremendously impressive climax to Saturn but loses his touch in the coda, where horns are too loud, flutes too soft, and the tune sometimes gets lost behind its accompaniment. The opening of Uranus takes far too much time to get going, though it rises to a spectacular climax with a brilliant organ glissando. Neptune disappoints: it sounds merely distantly miked rather than mysterious (more so than the preceding movements), and its various solo wind entrances stick out with excessive prominence. Also, as noted above, it leads without pause into Matthews' ghastly Pluto.

Actually, what makes this disc worth owning isn't The Planets, but The Mystic Trumpeter, a gorgeous Whitman setting for soprano and orchestra that deserves far more attention on disc than it has received to date. Claire Rutter delivers the text with excellent diction and generally lovely tone, albeit in the somewhat stiff, English oratorio style (all those rolled r's!). The forward placement of the voice obscures some orchestral detail in quieter sections even if it allows her to ride Lloyd-Jones' uninhibited climaxes more easily than would probably be the case live. Still, Naxos earns the thanks of all Holst fans for reviving this neglected work in such an impressive performance.

Sonically this recording isn't a total success. Timpani are too prominent (listen to how they obliterate the brass at the end of Jupiter), and the reverberation actually makes their important opening solo in Uranus sound like five notes rather than four. At low dynamic levels (such as the opening of Neptune) the music lacks presence, and bass frequencies (organ pedals in Saturn, bass drum in Uranus or Jupiter) aren't consistently captured. Still, for The Mystic Trumpeter and the big climaxes of The Planets, there's much to enjoy. And hopefully this disc marks the last recorded appearance of Pluto. [4/12/2002]

--David Hurwitz