Prom 14: Holst's The Planets, Royal Albert Hall

Fleet-footed Mercury, warlike Mars, joyful Jupiter… the seven heavenly bodies depicted in Gustav Holst’s The Planets are masterpieces of musical painting.

Though much recorded, nothing prepares the listener for hearing this great piece live. The vast orchestra and the range of moods take the audience on an unforgettable skyride. And when the conductor is John Wilson, famous for interpreting film scores and showstopping numbers from the big musicals, this reading of The Planets is sure to come in the brightest colours.

Before Venus, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and the rest orbit round the Royal Albert Hall, the last monumental symphony of another British composer, Ralph Vaughan Williams, is played by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.

Born only two years before Holst, Vaughan Williams was at the heart of a golden age for British music. His Symphony No 9 was originally intended to depict Thomas Hardy’s novel Tess of the D’Urbervilles, but as the composition proceeded, its landscape widened, and some consider it the composer’s greatest symphony. First performed in 1958, it was played at a Prom in August of that year; the composer died only three weeks later.

Listen out for three saxophones early on, uncommon for a symphony orchestra. These jazz instruments were not, said Vaughan Williams, ‘to behave like demented cats, but are allowed to be their romantic selves'.