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<\/p>\nIt’s not every day you bring together Hollywood royalty like Emma Thompson, a live Australian orchestra, and music inspired by astrology.<\/p>\n
But a new orchestral experience in Sydney, centred around Gustav Holst’s The Planets is about to do just that.<\/p>\n
Holst composed The Planets between 1914 and 1917, decades before humans cracked the Earth’s atmosphere. His music influences our understanding of the sky, especially on screen.<\/p>\n
“The Planets sits at the intersection of myth, psychology and orchestral innovation,” says conductor Benjamin Northey, who will lead the Sydney Symphony Orchestra’s performances on May 1-3.<\/p>\n
The suite has long influenced screen composers, from John Williams’s Star Wars to Joff Bush’s Bluey.<\/p>\n
But in a world premiere for the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Northey will conduct a silent film starring real-life celebrity couple Emma Thompson and Greg Wise, created by Dutch director Lucas van Woerkum.<\/p>\n
Creating a film for a live orchestra\u00a0<\/p>\n
Traditionally, The Planets is used as a soundtrack in numerous films and TV shows.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Van Woerkum flips that tradition by creating a film to accompany the existing music.<\/p>\n
LOSS explores the process of dying.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Greg Wise and Emma Thompson play the roles of married artists in LOSS. (Supplied: Sydney Symphony Orchestra)<\/p>\n
“You’ll see the person who’s left behind and the one who’s making the journey to the afterlife,” van Woerkum says.<\/p>\n
Thompson begged van Woerkum to join the Symphonic Cinema project after seeing the premiere of his earlier film featuring Wise.<\/p>\n
“I was absolutely blown away by this synthesis of a live orchestra and film, [which] means the music enters my body in an incredibly profound way,” Thompson says.<\/p>\n
“I went to Lucas and said: ‘Please, can I be in one?'”<\/p>\n
Van Woerkum was so surprised, he had to double check that “the champagne didn’t go to my head.”<\/p>\n
Films with a live orchestra are a regular concert feature, but Northey explains how Symphonic Cinema is different: “I don’t have to adjust the music to the visuals.”<\/p>\n
Instead, van Woerkum will be sitting with the orchestra and control what appears on screen.<\/p>\n
“Every shot of the film is triggered by me; I can speed it up or slow it down to bring it directly in sync with the music,” Van Woerkum says.<\/p>\n
Processing loss<\/p>\n
Thompson says the on-screen couple in LOSS isn’t based on her real-life marriage with Wise.<\/p>\n
![\"Emma](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/97c12989f55acd9c1900557c0f80a37b.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Emma Thompson in the silent film LOSS, premiered by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, May 2026. (Supplied: Sydney Symphony Orchestra)<\/p>\n
“[On screen], we were married and we were both artists. Greg was a photographer and I was a painter. You get the sense this couple is used to being in peaceable and creative silence.”<\/p>\n
Thompson adds: “They’re not people of the word in the way we are. We never stop banging on and laughing a lot.”<\/p>\n
Thompson and Wise’s experiences with grief early in life inform how they approached their characters.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Thompson’s father died when she was 23, while Wise lost his best friend when he was young.<\/p>\n
“No one really talks about grief, no one really talks about death,” she says.<\/p>\n
“We have a very uneasy relationship with death.”<\/p>\n
While Thompson wouldn’t reveal which of the main characters dies during the film, she says that the couple decided to stop listening to Holst’s music during filming.<\/p>\n
“Music is so powerful that it would have affected how we played the characters.”Planets with personalities<\/p>\n
Holst based his seven-movement orchestral suite on astrology rather than astronomy, giving Each planet a distinct personality.<\/p>\n
Loading Instagram content<\/p>\n
Mars is the bringer of war, and Venus is the bringer of peace. Jupiter evokes joy and expansiveness, while Saturn brings old age.<\/p>\n
“It’s not just about the planets of the solar system, but human psychology filtered through astrology,” Northey says.<\/p>\n
If the music sounds familiar to you, that’s because “so many screen composers have referenced it,” Northey explains.<\/p>\n
John Williams turned to Mars, the Bringer of War for inspiration when he wrote the music for George Lucas’s first space opera Star Wars.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Williams directly copied the big, full-orchestra chords at the end of Mars for the Star Wars Main Title,” Northey says.<\/p>\n
“You’ve got this relentless drumbeat ostinato, and a brass-led, militaristic colour that evokes war,” Northey says.<\/p>\n
Williams isn’t the only composer who has turned to The Planets for inspiration.<\/p>\n
Bluey’s lead composer, Joff Bush, extensively quotes Jupiter in the episode Sleepy Time, during a dream sequence set among the planets.<\/p>\n
Others have borrowed from The Planets too, including in Gladiator, The Right Stuff, Conan the Barbarian and The Man Who Fell to Earth.<\/p>\n
Music that keeps expanding<\/p>\n
Since Holst wrote The Planets, our knowledge of the universe has expanded dramatically.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
Benjamin Northey has overseen many live\u2011to\u2011film orchestral productions.
\n\u00a0 (Sydney Symphony Orchestra)<\/p>\n
Pluto was discovered in 1930 and later reclassified as a dwarf planet. Space exploration followed in the 1950s.<\/p>\n
Holst didn’t revisit The Planets to add a movement for Pluto before he died in 1934, but others have taken up the challenge, including Leonard Bernstein <\/a>and Colin Matthews.<\/p>\n In 2024, Australian composer Deborah Cheetham Fraillon added the most important planet of all: Earth.<\/p>\n Asked why The Planets still feels alive, Northey says: “This piece works on every single level. It’s visceral, intellectual, cultural, and it has had a profound impact on how we hear the orchestra today; even just how we hear stories in music.”<\/p>\n Even with a silent film featuring screen royalty like Thompson, “the music remains the most important thing, but the visuals are there to deepen the emotional trajectory,” Northey says.<\/p>\n Thompson highlights the “double-helix” relationship between the music and the film:<\/p>\n “The music spoke to the moving image, and the moving image informed the music.”<\/p>\n