You already know that The Planets is colourful, tuneful and accessible, but when you hear it conducted by a wizard of the podium like John Wilson, you might just end up thinking it’s a masterpiece. As a piece of music it’s all but indestructible, and lesser conductors would simply set it on its way, but not here. Wilson is a semi-regular guest of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and his concerts are becoming season highlights. He brought his famous attention to detail to bear on Holst’s suite, but also a flash of showmanship that allowed both the music and the orchestra to shine at their very brightest.
Nothing that Wilson did was complicated, but everything he did was carefully thought through. He began Mars slowly and very quietly, but this gave the crescendo more space to grow so that, after a carefully judged sense of ebb and flow, the climaxes were properly hair-raising. It’s so simple, but so effective, and he used a similar effect in the slow march of Saturn, making it both gripping and terrifying. That movement’s opening was chilly and empty, but it ended in blissful resolution before a brightly Technicolored Uranus that balanced detail with chaos.
Wilson’s chosen tempi were flexible and often surprising. He pushed forwards urgently in Venus, but why not? Peaceful doesn’t have to mean sleepy, and Jupiter’s tempo was always shifting around between grace and swagger. Maybe the big tune suffered from an inconsistent beat, and it would have been better if the brass hadn’t lost the beat in Uranus, but this was a terrifically exciting Planets that made me hear new things in this most familiar score (it was the first tape I bought as a kid), and the ladies of the RSNO Chorus sounded eerily lovely as they floated off into infinity.
Wilson brought all of the same qualities to a beautifully judged performance of John Ireland’s The Forgotten Rite, collaborating with the strings to produce an opening of sensational softness, creating a beauteous sense of benediction that never went away throughout the piece's brief span. The orchestra were also the stars of Elgar’s Sea Pictures, responding to every flick of Wilson’s baton with expressive agility and a marvellous sense of swell in both Sabbath Morning and The Swimmer. Alice Coote sang with a sense of taking the audience into her confidence and with a feeling of letting us in on a secret. Her voice sounded unusually withdrawn, however, and slightly lacking in power; the expression slightly wan in a way that meant I felt appreciative but never uplifted. Coote’s voice tended to disappear into the orchestra’s rather too often, particularly at those burgeoning climaxes; but when the orchestral sound was as terrific as this, that was not altogether a bad thing.
