Frome Symphony: Holst the Planets, Nielsen and Macens

Frome Symphony: Holst The Planets, Nielsen and Macens

Carl Nielsen – Helios Overture
Ella Macens – The Space Between Stars
Gustav Holst – The Planets

Sun, stars, and the vast sweep of the cosmos — this spring concert is built around one of the most compelling themes in the orchestral repertoire, and features a programme that moves from the ancient world to the present day.

Nielsen’s Helios Overture opens with a single, sustained chord rising out of silence — the sun lifting above the horizon of the Aegean Sea, just as Nielsen witnessed it during a stay in Greece in 1903. Over fifteen minutes, the music traces the arc of a day: the slow build to a blazing midday climax, and the long, quiet fading as the sun sinks back below the sea. It is a piece that feels as elemental as the phenomenon it depicts.

Australian composer Ella Macens invites us, in The Space Between Stars, to imagine lying in an open field and gazing up at a sky alive with light. Written in the wake of her grandfather’s death and drawing on her Latvian heritage — in which the natural world carries deep symbolic meaning — the piece moves between delicate, flickering passages and bold, expansive writing, holding the philosophical question at its heart: is the space between stars empty, or is it full of something we cannot quite name?

Holst’s The Planets needs little introduction, yet never loses its capacity to astonish. Written between 1914 and 1917, its seven movements range from the relentless dread of Mars to the ethereal, wordless voices that close Neptune. It remains one of the most imaginative and purely thrilling things in the orchestral canon.