Kensington Symphony Orchestra is back at Fairfield Halls where the group will join forces with the female voices of Epiphoni Consort to perform Gustav Holst’s The Planets (1914-17).

The perennially popular orchestral suite, premièred by Sir Adrian Boult at the Queen’s Hall in London during the final weeks of the First World War, comprises seven movements named after planets of the solar system and their supposed astrological characters.

Scored for large orchestra and featuring two women’s choruses, the work – which is said to have taken inspiration from Schoenberg’s Five Pieces for Orchestra – was written after Holst’s interest in astrology was sparked during a holiday in Spain with fellow composer Arnold Bax.

KSO also performs Serenade to Music (1938) by Holst’s friend Ralph Vaughan Williams. Written for solo singers, chorus and orchestra, and dedicated to conductor Sir Henry Wood, it features lyrics adapted from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. Sergei Rachmaninov, who was present at the work’s première, was so overcome by the beauty of the music that he wept.

Music director Russell Keable also leads the orchestra in John Foulds’s April-England (1926/32), a typically pastoral work described by the composer as a depiction of “the boundless fecundity and opulent burgeoning of springtime”.

Described as “one of the very best amateur groups in the country” by Classical Music magazine, KSO has been hailed by Classical Source for “putting on bold, adventurous programmes that few of the ‘big five’ in London would either think of or get away with”.

Image © Creative Commons; courtesy of the Lunar and Planetary Institute, Houston, Texas