Gustav Holst: music-you-won't-be-lulled-to-sleep-by

We had a very busy weekend, with activities that got us up early in the morning, kept us on our feet for hours at a time, and just generally doing responsible things for two days that in the end, left us tired out.

Our final event of the weekend was a Sunday evening concert with Symphony Nova Scotia — the final concert of the current season. Dan and I made a little joke going in that we'd probably settle into those soft comfy seats at the Rebecca Cohn and have a nice nap.

It turned out, however, to be music-you-won't-be-lulled-to-sleep-by.

The music director of Symphony NS is Bernhard Gueller. He's a very accomplished musician and conductor and I'm sure we're very fortunate to have him.

Maestro Gueller

One of the things I like about him is the intimate way he talks to us — a full house in a 1,000 seat theatre — as if he's speaking to us across the kitchen table. He tells us about the music we're about to hear, often about where and when it was first performed and how its first audience responded to it.

The main event of our concert was after the intermission — Gustav Holst's The Planets.

Gustav Holst

It was first performed in 1918 and a reviewer said the audience (still suffering the consequences of the First World War) found the brutality of the first movement (Mars, the Bringer of War) almost unbearable. I didn't find it unbearable but it was brutal — it was very far from being the gentle and melodic lullaby that would have put us to sleep.

The subsequent movements were all different from each other, in mood and tone. Holst had written The Planets not from astronomy but from astrology so his message in each case was specific: Venus, the Bringer of Peace; Mercury, the Winged Messenger; Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity; Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age; Uranus, the Magician; and Neptune, the Mystic.

I found each of the pieces to be very interesting music and, as I always do, I tried to make a connection with the composer. I read in the program that Gustav Holst was not a happy man. He always saw himself as a failure, was always short of money and unable to make a living as a composer — he had to work as a school-teacher and occasional orchestral trombone player.

He had his first success with The Planets but he was shy and found his fame hard to deal with. Sometimes you just can't win.

Before intermission, we'd heard a sad piece from Peter Grimes by Benjamin Britten — a passacaglia.

The passacaglia (/pæsəˈkɑːliə/; Italian: [pasːaˈkaʎːa]) is a musical form that originated in early seventeenth-century Spain and is still used today by composers. It is usually of a serious character and is often, but not always, based on a bass-ostinato and written in triple metre.

And we heard the delightful mezzo-soprano Allyson McHardy singing five "Sea Pictures" by Sir Edward Elgar.

They were lovely songs and I guess we could have fallen asleep during her performance but that would have been rude and we didn't.

This is the very dress she was wearing too.