Where: Gloucester Cathedral

When: Saturday, September 22, 7pm

Gloucester Cathedral is delighted to be hosting a very special centenary performance of Holst's much-loved Planets Suite, in the composer's own county Cathedral.

The Cheltenham Symphony Orchestra will be conducted by Gloucester Cathedral's director of music Adrian Partington in what will be a roof-raising concert of light and sound.

The Cathedral's own Girl Choristers will perform the famous ethereal ladies' chorus that ends the suite.

The concert will begin with a performance of Sir Edward Elgar's Cockaigne Overture.

Written at the end of the First World War, during which Holst spent time working with troops at Salonica, The Planets Suite is an apt start to the Cathedral's autumn programme of events commemorating the end of the war.

Laura Kinnear, curator of the Holst Birthplace Museum, will deliver a pre-concert talk in the Lady Chapel at 6pm, covering her research into Holst's war work and the ongoing Salonica exhibition at the museum.

The programme will also include fellow Gloucestershire composer Vaughan Williams's Lark Ascending, frequently named as one the Britain's favourite classical works, and composed as a response to the First World War.

The Cathedral is thrilled that rising star Nazrin Rashidova will perform the violin solo in this work, and even more so that she will be playing it on the 1685 Sauret Stradivari.

During her PhD research into the violinist and composer Emile Sauret, Nazrin discovered that the Stradivari instrument named after him has made at least one prior visit to Gloucester. Sauret performed at a concert at Gloucester Shire Hall on 4 April 1893.

John Ludlow, the current owner of the instrument, has kindly allowed it to return to Gloucester for this concert.

A pre-concert and interval bar will be available from 6.30pm in the cloisters.

Tickets for the pre-concert talk are £5, concert tickets are priced at £13-£36 and available from the Cathedral shop, on 01452 76892 or online at www.gloucestercathedral.org.uk