Music of the Heavens: Holst’s Planets

Gemma New, conductor
Geneva Lewis, violin
Women of the San Diego Master Chorale
San Diego Symphony Orchestra

LERA AUERBACH: Icarus
VAUGHAN WILLIAMS: The Lark Ascending
HOLST: The Planets, Op. 32

A concert about the skies above us, beginning with Lera Auerbach’s cinematic description of the Ancient Greek mythological hero Icarus who killed himself by flying too close to the sun, followed by Ralph Vaughan Williams’s most popular piece, The Lark Ascending, a miniature violin concerto in which the soloist represents a tiny skylark on a spring day, flying higher and higher into the heavens and pouring out their love in cascades of folk-inspired melody. The concert ends with Gustav Holst’s evergreen and spectacular orchestral suite The Planets, describing the seven planets of ancient astrology, each with their own mysterious properties which shape our human lives and characters.