Imma Setiadi & Nigel Clayton at Chichester

 Imma Setiadi & Nigel Clayton, Chichester Cathedral, October 1

Chichester Cathedral has been marking the 150th anniversary of Gustav Holst whose ashes are interred in the north transept, not least with this piano duet performance of The Planets in an arrangement by Vally Lasker, Nora Day and Holst himself. In those far off days when the record collection took up a lot less space, my cassette of Pictures at an Exhibition had Ravel's orchestration on one side and the original Mussorgsky piano version on the other and I gradually came to prefer the piano. So, how would such a Planets come across after a lifetime of familiarity with the sound of the full score. 

There is a danger with well-known music that we don't listen as closely because we know what's going to happen but a different arrangement makes it fresh. Nigel played the lower half of the keyboard with Imma on the high notes, the menace of Mars becoming thunderous with so many notes, many of which are the same one. Our perception of these planets has altered with more being discovered about them and to give Mars its due, it's almost certainly the most hospitable outside of our own.

Venus is all tranquil serenity without persuading me to take a holiday there and twinkled into the distance and Mercury was indeed quicksilver in Imma's graceful hands.

Jupiter is in many ways the big, show-stopping number shining forth with brilliant light before its magnificent tune benefits from being purely itself without add-on associations of patriotism or rugby union. Before that chimed in heartily I thought it was taken in quick tempo but it's been some years since I heard it.

The best of the 'poetry', for me, comes in the more remote, outer planets. Saturn is stooped, rheumatic and perhaps plagued with memories before Imma and Nigel make the final passage lilt with what must be restfulness. Uranus is the magician and his magic is performed with a similar energy to that heard in The Sorcerer's Apprentice and in what was a series of fast-slow or loud-quiet contrasts, Neptune was suitably aquatic while billed as 'mystic' but also mistier and mistier towards a beautifully handled long-lingering finish that, gladly, was respected with some moments of silence before the appreciative applause.

What we will never know is with what bleakness Holst might have gone further into the outskirts of the solar system with Pluto but that wild and lonely place, having only been found since was subsequently relegated from proper planetary status and so The Planets has been restored to completeness. 

The piano duet version certainly works and Imma and Nigel make a fine interpretation of it. In some ways the orchestration makes Neptune spookier but it's hard to say that Mars or Jupiter are any less strident played by four hands and I'm at pains not to say 'reduced to' four hands because there's nothing about it that sounds reduced. On a most rewarding day, we could visit Holst's last resting place and maybe reflect that if you are to be mostly remembered for one blockbuster popular classic, it's best that it's one of such imagination and variety.