# Holst: Original piano vs more common orchestra



## caters

I know some composers write their orchestral works from a piano score. Holst wrote his The Planets from a piano duet score and then orchestrated it. Most common movement of that suite I listen to, be it piano or orchestral is Mars.

I see like the bare bones of the orchestral score in the piano score. But I have seen several people wondering how Holst gets the tympani and col legno into his piano score. Here is my hypothesis as to how he gets those into his piano version.

He has the left hand of the second piano play stacatto even though it is isn't written since stacatto is the closest you get on a piano to col legno. As for the tympani I think that is partly represented by tremolos and partly by staccato notes.

Here is the 2 piano version that Holst arranged for orchestra:






And here is the orchestral version with the tympani and col legno and everything else:






1 main difference I see besides instrumentation is that at the ending chord, it sounds like there are a lot of tremolos ending on C whereas in the piano score, there is just the chord itself, no tremolos.


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