Many people know Gustav Holst's suite, The Planets, even if they're not quite sure where they've heard it before. Several of its themes have been "borrowed" to serve as background music for everything from commercials to science fiction films. We'll start this week's program with The Planets as it was meant to be performed, with Sir Adrian Boult and the London Philharmonic.
Then it's off to the theater with overtures to The Wasps and Egmont.
The series of the Shostakovich Preludes and Fugues continues, and then we have some very different concepts of pastorals -- from the rustic to the ribald.