In March, when the world observed Earth Hour, conductor David Robertson led the Sydney Symphony and a “Global Orchestra” in an innovative Internet project in which musicians around the country hooked up to play along with a live performance in the Opera House. The idea was to perform an hour-long piece while the country turned off the lights. There could only be one work that would be perfect for the occasion and that is Gustav Holst’s The Planets.

The Planets

It’s often easy with such a familiar work to think it a hackneyed old warhorse. But forget the countless misuses and abuses by ad execs and lazy movie directors and put yourself in the shoes of someone hearing it for the first time. Surf just a few bars of any movement and you realise for an English audience in 1916 there was nothing quite like it. Stravinsky, Dukas, Wagner and Debussy were all influences but this is still a strikingly original work.

Mars with its insistent 5/4 beat and chaotic chords or the quiet beauty of Venus; the Mendelssohnian quicksilver of Mercury or the bubbling jollity of Jupiter’s opening; the ominous sense of senescence...