I’d expected great things of Slatkin’s Planets when it first appeared at the tail­end of 1997‚ but came away underwhelmed; sad to relate‚ a rehearing amply confirms my initial misgivings. Falling well short in terms of sheer menace‚ ‘Mars’ is delivered with a steely‚ self­conscious slickness that sets the tone for the remainder. ‘Venus’ is gorgeous but curiously uninvolving‚ ‘Jupiter’ lacks something in sheer swagger and exuberant panache (the big tune at its heart is perhaps just a fraction too stolidly paced)‚ and even the mischief­making antics of ‘Uranus’ fail to raise a chuckle. Ultimately‚ for all the impressive coord­ination on display‚ Slatkin’s performance is a bit too flashy and hard­hearted for my liking. As captured within the comparatively unexpansive Walthamstow acoustic‚ the Philharmonia strings lack something in customary bloom. We also get an agreeably fresh­faced Greensleeves Fantasia as well as an immaculately groomed‚ yet disconcertingly tingle­free account of the great Tallis Fantasia. Not an appealing proposition‚ then‚ even at super­budget price; for a bargain Planets‚ try Sir Andrew Davis’s superlatively engineered Apex reissue instead. For the third of his five recordings of The Planets‚ dedicatee Sir Adrian Boult travelled to the Austrian capital. The results are a mixed bag‚ to say the very least: his conception remains as enviably lucid and undemonstrative as ever‚ but the Vienna State Opera Orchestra sounds less than ideally familiar with the idiom (how many of its members had previously encountered Holst’s masterpiece‚ I wonder?)‚ and ensemble­ and intonation­problems are distractingly legion. Discipline improves markedly for the fill­ups (which are identical to those on the Slatkin reissue)‚ but again there are occasions where these players seem less than entranced by the bill of fare (the Tallis Fantasia is‚ truth to tell‚ not without a certain sticky literalness). One or two odd balances apart‚ the engineering is pretty decent for its 1959 vintage. Boult diehards will probably want this disc; others should proceed with caution.