Holst's The Planets | Tonbridge Philharmonic Society

Tonbridge Philharmonic celebrates the new year with a wonderful concert of English music from the early twentieth century.

We open with the overture to The Wreckers, by Dame Ethel Smyth, considered by many to be the precursor to Britten’s Peter Grimes. Then we move to Norfolk for Vaughan Williams’s Rhapsody No 1, written as the first part of an incomplete three movement ‘folk song symphony’.

Eric Coates’s prolific output means that most of us recognise his work – such as By a Sleepy Lagoon, used to open Desert Island Discs. In the Three Elizabeths Suite he references three of our monarchs – Elizabeth I and II, and Elizabeth, Queen Consort of King George VI. Coates’ work stays with us when other more cerebral compositions have faded. Perhaps this was the skill that caused Ethel Smyth to exclaim "You are the man who writes tunes", and to ask him how he did it.

Our final work will be Holst’s The Planets Suite, and the last movement Neptune, The Mystic will feature our own choir and joined by West Kent Youth Voices (director Adrian Pitts). Imogen Holst wrote after the première of ‘the hidden chorus of women’s voices growing fainter and fainter in the distance until the imagination knew no difference between sound and silence’.

Join us on 18th February and enjoy that sound and silence with us!