Projected imagery from NASA will accompany the Greenville Symphony’s January performances of Holst’s “The Planets.”
“For its 75th season, the Greenville Symphony Orchestra is spotlighting some of its greatest live performances from the past,” writes Paul Hyde in Monday’s (2/13) Greenville Journal (South Carolina). “Gustav Holst’s symphonic showpiece ‘The Planets’ dominates the orchestra’s next masterworks concerts, Feb. 18-19 at the Peace Center. The program includes expansive visual images of our solar system’s planets projected on a large screen above the orchestra during the performances. Holst’s powerful music and the accompanying visuals, the latter created by NASA, dazzled Upstate audiences, young and old, when the Greenville Symphony last performed the work a decade ago, said Edvard Tchivzhel, the orchestra’s music director and conductor. ‘We’re bringing back some of the milestones of our repertoire,’ Tchivhel said. ‘This is one of our significant achievements.’… This particular music-and-visuals version of ‘The Planets’ has been widely featured by symphony orchestras across the nation…. The NASA visuals are carefully synchronized with Holst’s music, but the visuals follow the conductor’s tempo. Often when working with visual projections—when the orchestra accompanies a film, for instance—the conductor has to follow the pace of the imagery; that’s not true in this case. The concerts open with Franz Liszt’s ‘Les Preludes.’ ”
