Holst: Music for Two Pianos The Planets, Uranus

[555luckyclover]

I fink this music is best of the holst

[JupiterIV]

If anyone's interested ...

This is Holst’s own version of The Planets dating from the years 1914 to 1916. Unlike most keyboard versions of an orchestral score, it was not an arrangement of the full score. It existed before the orchestral score had been written out, although details of the instrumentation had already been clear in Holst’s mind from the moment when he began sketching out the work.

[JupiterIV]

(continued)

The reason that he needed a keyboard version on paper was that he suffered from neuritis in his right arm, and this often prevented him from playing over his sketches while composing. He was able to ask two of his colleagues on the music staff of St. Paul’s Girls’ School, Vally Lasker, and Nora Day, to play his two-piano version to him on Saturday mornings in his soundproof music room at the school.

[JupiterIV]

(continued) When the time came for them to help him to write out the full score, they were able to follow the details of instrumentation which they had written out in the margins of the keyboard manuscripts they had been playing from.

[JupiterIV]

(concluded)

The seven movements of this two-piano version were first published separately in 1949 – 1951, and most have been out of print for some time. They are now reissued complete in one volume, providing a welcome opportunity for pianists to discover the music for themselves in performance.

– Imogen Holst, 1979