As you would expect from this particular partnership, here's a Planets full of impressive things. Right from the outset, you feel Handley really knows this score inside out. Take ''Mars'', for example: one has heard perhaps more sheerly ferocious accounts elsewhere, but few that are anything like as texturally revealing (Holst's multi-layered horn and brass writing are thrillingly well captured by the sound engineers). ''Venus'' starts with a quite ravishing horn solo (RPO principal Jeff Bryant), and what follows is a less chaste, more tenderly expressive portrait than is sometimes encountered. ''Mercury'', too, comes close to the ideal in its daring refinement, and for once those dancing violin harmonics, some 30 seconds or so in, really do leap off the page. In ''Jupiter'', Handley paces Holst's 'big tune' to eloquent perfection, the glorious melody lent extra amplitude by the handsome acoustic of St Augustine's, Kilburn. Handley also sees to it that the galumphing antics of ''Uranus'' are rather more sinister than usual, with heckelphone and double-bassoon really making their presence felt; what is more, this movement's cataclysmic climax is, well, precisely that—the physical impact of Holst's sensational organ glissando registers stunningly well here (it certainly left this listener airborne with excitement!).
So far, then, so very good. It isn't quite all plain sailing, though: in ''Neptune'', the female chorus (too closely balanced for my taste) are clearly taxed by Holst's writing, with results that are anything but ethereal; during the trombone-led processional in ''Saturn'' (beginning at 1'51''), concentration is fatally undermined by one or two irritating off-stage noises; and those same sparrows which JS noted on Andrew Davis's recent Teldec account of Brigg Fair (1/94) are momentarily startled into activity by Handley's gun-shot timpani at the start of ''Uranus''. It is only fair to report that no such problems occur on Sir Charles Mackerras's outstandingly fresh RLPO recording: now reissued within Virgin's super-budget Virgo series, it also benefits from the superior production-values afforded by the experienced Keener/Clements team.
As for the fill-ups: Handley gives us a vigorous, richly-upholstered St Paul's Suite; Mackerras throws in a rip-roaring account of The Perfect Fool ballet music. Let me add that Tring International's booklet contains decent programme-notes, a potted history of the RPO, biographies of Handley and Holst, as well as a full listing of all the orchestral personnel; it is, however, strangely bereft of individual track timings. At the price, this is undoubtedly a bargain, though with just a little more care and (I fancy) preparation-time, it could have been a truly formidable one.'