Not one, but two fine pianists – Peter Donohoe and Martin Roscoe – launch our Sunday afternoon series of concerts dominated by English music from between the World Wars. As they were such friends in life, it is especially pleasing that Bax and Holst share this first concert, but we have other reasons for this pairing too. There is a deeper personal link since it was actually Bax’s brother, Clifford who drew Holst towards the subject of the planets in the first place. As an astrologer and poet he was fascinated with the idea that each planet had its own distinct character – they were much more than mere heavenly bodies to him. Coincidentally, Holst completed his first piano version of The Planets around the same time that Arnold Bax was writing Moy Mell – and as that piece is such a celebration of landscape, we include it here in place of the missing planet from Holst’s set: the Earth itself.