📍 Where: Aspen Music Festival – YouTube
🎶 Program: Gustav Holst — The Planets, Op. 32
👤 Performers: Aspen Festival Orchestra — Robert Spano, conductor
🕔 Date & Time: Live on 24 August 2025, 5:15 PM MDT (GMT-6)
▶️ Availability: Free streaming on YouTube
The Aspen Music Festival closes its season with Gustav Holst’s most celebrated score, The Planets. Written between 1914 and 1916, the seven-movement suite draws inspiration not from Roman mythology but from the astrological character of each planet. Holst himself suggested that the subtitles were enough to guide the listener: Mars, the Bringer of War; Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity; Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age, and so on.
The orchestral invention and colour of The Planets quickly made Holst famous — a recognition he never fully embraced — and the work remains a landmark of 20th-century symphonic writing. Under the direction of Robert Spano, the Aspen Festival Orchestra brings the season to a close with this cosmic journey that culminates in the ethereal fade of Neptune, the Mystic.
Subscribe to our newsletter
Support Moto Perpetuo
We are an independent platform dedicated to classical music journalism. Your support helps us maintain rigorous, ad-free coverage, news, and analysis without paywalls.
donate