Reference Recordings proudly presents Holst’s best known and beloved works in an outstanding interpretation from Michael Stern and the Kansas City Symphony. This release was...

Reference Recordings proudly presents Holst’s best known and beloved works in an outstanding interpretation from Michael Stern and the Kansas City Symphony. This release was recorded in the beautiful and acoustically acclaimed Helzberg Hall, Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts. It was produced by David Frost, six-time winner of the Classical Producer of the Year GRAMMY® award. It was recorded by RR’s engineering team, comprised of GRAMMY® winning engineer and Technical Director Keith O. Johnson, and multi-GRAMMY® nominated engineer Sean Martin. This is the seventh in Reference Recordings’ series with Kansas City Symphony. Previous albums are "Shakespeare’s Tempest"; the Grammy® Award-winning "Britten’s Orchestra"; an Elgar/Vaughan Williams project; "Miraculous Metamorphoses"; an all-Saint-Saëns album featuring the magnificent Organ Symphony, and the music of contemporary American composer Adam Schoenberg (nominated for two Grammy® Awards).

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REVIEW:

Top quality sound supports a superb performance by Michael Stern and the Kansas City Symphony Orchestra, pulling out all the stops in each of Holst's seven visits to the then known planets: Mars is given a massively bellicose sound and is then followed by a transparently crystalline Venus and on through a fleeting Mercury, a hyper-active Jupiter, a sulking Saturn, a mystical Uranus and a riveting Neptune that fades off into eerie infinity. The accompanying Perfect Fool ballet music is vintage Edwardian fluff – charming though it is. Outstanding.

– RafaelMusicNotes.com