Gustav Holst’s The Planets, Op. 32 early-20th century orchestral suite has worked its way into mainstream culture by way of inspiring several popular composers. Many have recognized the influence it had on John Williams’ famous Star Wars themes. Hans Zimmer emulated parts of it for the Gladiator film soundtrack to the extent that the Holst Foundation sued for copyright infringement. Its opening movement, Mars, the Bringer of War, is particularly influential, and many unconventional interpretations have brought the piece to genres as diverse as marching band, black metal, progressive rock, and pure synthesizer.

Isao Tomita’s Interpretation

Greatly inspired by Wendy Carlos’ adaptations of classical pieces for synthesizer (his debut album, 1972’s Switched on Rock picks up directly on Carlos’ Switched on Bach), the Japanese composer ambitiously recorded the entirety of Holst’s Planets for synthesizer, released in 1976 as Holst: The Planets, which even reached the Top 100 charts at #67 in the U.S.

Tomita’s interpretation outraged classical purists, and even resulted in the Holst estate’s lawsuit which temporarily blocked its distribution and succeeded in pulling 30,000 copies of the album from store shelves. Tomita fully embraced the space-age aspect of analog synth sounds, transforming the orchestral epic into a bonafide “space fantasy”. The pearl-clutching among the purists must have been through the roof, though the album has endured among fans of synth music.

Unlike Carlos, who sought to legitimize the synthesizer as an instrument suitable for faithful interpretations of classical music, Tomita didn’t hold back from exploring what made a synthesizer sound like a synthesizer. Self-oscillating resonance and filter sweeps prevail throughout his arrangements, ushering Holst into the space age of pop culture, at the time bolstered by films such as Close Encounters of the Third Kind (which we recently explored in our recent article about the ARP 2500’s role in interstellar diplomacy) and Star Wars.

Emerson, Lake and Powell’s Interpretation

In 1985, when Keith Emerson and Greg Lake sought reunite ELP, Carl Palmer was unfortunately unavailable due to contractual obligations with Asia, and so they joined forces with legendary drummer Cozy Powell for the fan-favorite and critically-praised Emerson, Lake and Powell.

The interpretation of Mars on this release has some similarities to Tomita, but fewer than one might imagine. Tomita’s recording is performed entirely with synthesizers, and Tomita himself is the only musician. As with the early Wendy Carlos releases, it was a feat to record an orchestral piece on synthesizer, as they were only monophonic at the time, so it was a painstaking process to record such a polyphonic arrangement. While Keith Emerson also had a hand in immortalizing the space-age sounds of modular Moogs in the 70s, by 1985, he had a plethora of polyphonic options at his disposal, including the Kurzweil K250 and his legendary Yamaha GX-1 (which was ultimately purchased by Hans Zimmer). This allowed Emerson to perform the piece in its entirety without overdubs, and also favored sound choices closer to the original orchestral arrangement.

With this new rig, and capable rhythm section, Emerson, Lake and Powell’s performance is, for the most part, live, and they performed Mars faithful to the album recording during their subsequent tour. While I am not aware of any controversy around Emerson’s take on the piece, it should be noted that Emerson has a bit of a better track record than Tomita when it comes to staying in the good graces of the composers who work he interprets, such as when Ginastera praised ELP’s cover of Toccata as “formidable”.

I tend to listen to the Emerson interpretation the most, though I must say that I have a had a lot of fun revisiting Tomita for the purpose of this article. I am sure that every fan of synth music will find aspects of both to appreciate and enjoy.

Categories: Gear Reviews

J.P. Fontana