Here's a Planets crammed full of interpretative incident, superbly played by a legendary orchestra which had never previously set eyes on Holst's masterwork. Whereas Sir Adrian Boult's classic, roughly contemporaneous 1945 account with the BBC SO continues to enthral by dint of its searing authority and blistering concentration, Stokowski's broadcast performance evinces a giant theatricality and abundant zeal that prove just as hypnotically compelling. Purists should perhaps steer well clear, but beam to 'Venus' (a liberally tweaked, unforgettably luscious conception) and marvel at the staggering reserves of cantabile tone Stokowski draws from the NBC strings (likewise for the big tune in 'Jupiter'). The sensitively applied portamento here only becomes unacceptably gross (to modern ears, at any rate) in the awesome coda of 'Saturn', and for me the uncomfortably mannered central climax doesn't quite come off.
Elsewhere, there's some terrific playing in 'Mercury' and 'Uranus'; indeed, the latter positively swaggers with gleeful mischief, yet the Lento section beginning at 3'40'' is as mysterious as I have ever heard it (and make what you will of those extra sul ponticello strings at the very close). 'Less a mystic than a voluptuary!' is how annotator Edward Johnson describes Stokowski's portrait of 'Neptune', while at the same time commenting on its grief-stricken, imploring progress - 'a kind of ''lamentation'' for the war then raging across the world, perhaps?'.
Throughout the whole enterprise, a real sense of occasion easily shines through the inevitably crumbly acetate surfaces. Decidedly not everyone's cup of tea, then (after hearing Stokowski conduct this score in 1963, Boult observed: 'It wasn't what we're used to!'), but a performance connoisseurs should investigate all the same.
Taken from the same February 1943 concert, L'apres-midi d'un faune receives the most headily sensuous treatment imaginable, while the Debussy transcription (an extraordinarily atmospheric display) is aptly engulfed by a tidal-wave of applause even before the piece has ended. That just leaves Morton Gould's Two Marches - a cleverly scored diptych 'written in tribute to two of our gallant allies'. An instructive, hugely enterprising collection, and essential listening for all fans of this great conductor.'