Righteous Classical Music: Jupiter, The Bringer of Jollity by Gustav Holst [1916]

My sister played an abridgment of this one when her orchestra did a collaboration with the kiddie orchestra. It sounded so completely awesome. So you can imagine that if the abridgment was terrificoso, then the original must be RIGHETOUS!!
Anyhoo, Gustav Holst was a very revolutionary composer, at least in my most humble self-taught opinion. This work, Jupiter, is part of a much larger work called The Planets. The Planets is very unique and interesting. By far the most unique part of the entire piece is the very end of the final movement, Neptune, The Mystic. That movement features a women's choir, and at the end of the piece, the last bar is repeated until the sound fades out. This was achieved by having the choir singing in an adjacent room to the orchestra with the door open. They would sing the final bar, and a stagehand would slowly shut the door on them. This way the sound would 'fade out'. So cool, eh?
But anyway, Jupiter!
The piece is very bombastic and powerful sounding. There are two main themes that get repeated a few times. The first is cheerful and excited, while the second is more majestic and, well, really emotional. The instrumentation is genius. I love the use of strings, and especially the brass! The brass section really brings home the extreme Jupiter-ness of the composition, they make it sound so BIG! Oh, and how could I go through a music post without bringing up Piccolo or Flute? Well, the Piccolo part is pure awesome. It's so fast and difficult, but it sounds so starry! It's like the brass and the strings are this big hulkin' planet, and the piccolos (there are two of them in this piece!) are the stars.
So without further ado, here's the song! My ranting can't do it justice. XD

Next Up!: (maybe) Violin Concerto in D Major: Movement III (Rondo) by Beethoven or possibly Capriccio Espagnol by Rimsky-Korsakov

I'll get back to comics. I have a few stockpiled, but I haven't been able to access my Dad's camera for a while. :)
Oh, and the tag. Well, our adorably foreign conductor was trying to get the flutes to play more excited so he told them to imagine "One light, and then another light, and then... JUPITER!"