Holst: The Planets with Professor Brian Cox

A full-length performance anchors this film, where the BBC Symphony Orchestra, led by conductor Ben Gernon, plays Gustav Holst's iconic suite The Planets at the Barbican, timed to mark a century since the work's composition. Professor Brian Cox appears between movements, offering concise introductions that link each movement's mood to the latest planetary imagery and scientific context. The camera stays close to the musicians during crescendos and widens to take in the hall and the projected space visuals, so the presentation feels like a live concert woven with documentary elements rather than a standard lecture.

The presentation uses Holst's original score as its backbone, filmed at the Barbican with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Ben Gernon, and framed by Brian Cox's onstage commentary, giving viewers a performance and a guided listening experience.

As a concert-documentary piece it was aimed at broadcast and special event screenings rather than a traditional wide theatrical run, and there are no widely reported box office totals to indicate a major commercial release.

Holst's Planets has long influenced film scores, television, and popular conceptions of planetary character, and this staging leans into that history by pairing the music with high-resolution imagery and scientific narration. Brian Cox's presence helps bridge classical music audiences and science enthusiasts, which reinforces the suite's continuing role in how culture imagines the solar system.

Critical and audience responses tend to focus on the interplay between music and visual science, noting how the film frames Holst's movement titles as character studies of planets through orchestral color and imagery. The work emphasizes contrasts in tempo, texture, and orchestration to suggest temperament and motion, and the film's structure highlights those musical devices while offering accessible context for listeners who may be encountering the suite in a concert setting for the first time.