Gustav Holst’s The Planets was cinematic long before cinema knew what to do with it. In its seven movements audiences heard war, wonder, dread and the infinite decades before blockbuster soundtracks borrowed its thunder.

Its gravitational pull has since been felt on films such The Right Stuff, Conan the Barbarian and The Man Who Fell to Earth.

Now the familiar orchestral showpiece is about to be recast again, not as background music for a movie scene, but as the emotional engine of an entire, bespoke film.

On 1 May, Sydney Symphony Orchestra presents the world premiere of Symphonic Cinema: The Planets, in which the Sydney Opera House Concert Hall audience will view a new silent film created by Dutch director Lucas van Woerkum, performed live in tandem with the orchestra. 

On screen are the British actors Emma Thompson and Greg Wise. On the Concert Hall platform, Benjamin Northey conducts Holst’s score, and in the orchestra itself sits van Woerkum, triggering and shaping the film in real time as the music unfolds.

It is not a screening with accompaniment, nor a conventional “film with live orchestra” event. Van Woerkum calls it “symphonic cinema”.

“The music is the script, actually,” he says. “The film follows the movement of the music.”

Emma Thompson and Lucas Van Woerkum on the set of Loss. Photo supplied.

That idea has guided a body of work in which orchestral masterworks become the basis for newly created silent films, synchronised live in performance. Van Woerkum has previously worked with Stravinsky’s The Firebird, Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé and music by Mahler.

The Planets project began to crystalise during the pandemic hiatus, when van Woerkum revisited a score he had known since his youth. Before coming to film, he trained as a French horn player.

“I played the piece when I was 15 years old,” he says. “Then during Covid I listened again – it had been 10 or 15 years – and I thought: this is actually very good for film.”

The attraction was not simply the grandeur of Holst’s music, but its ambiguity. Unlike a ballet score, The Planets offers atmosphere and character rather than a linear story. That gave van Woerkum room to invent one.

Emma Thompson: Loss. Photo supplied.

His film, Loss, explores death, grief and what might lie beyond. It’s a recurring theme in his work. “I’ve always been interested in books or stories about the afterlife,” van Woerkum says. “Why shouldn’t I try to interpret it? How do I think it looks?”

The result tells a story from two perspectives: the person who dies, and the person left behind. Thompson and Wise play the central couple, with the emotional axis turning in the middle of the suite, during the famous hymn of Holst’s Jupiter.

“The structure of The Planets is very interesting because it’s sort of mirrored,” van Woerkum says. “Mars and Neptune are opposites, and then in the middle you have this beautiful hymn in Jupiter. I knew there had to be a switch in perspective there.”

That scene carries extra resonance because Thompson and Wise, married in real life, bring decades of shared history to the screen. Their real-life bond also deepened the atmosphere on set. Van Woerkum recalls Wise arriving on the fourth day of filming to find a coffin prepared for a pivotal scene.

“He saw it waiting there and had quite a strong emotional reaction,” says van Woerkum. “I had to take him aside for 10 minutes.”

Greg Wise and Emma Thompson: Loss. Photo supplied.

The film is silent, but van Woerkum says that demanded restraint rather than melodrama. In rehearsal, he had to ask Thompson to sometimes dial back her performance.

“With this music, it can become too pathetic if you’re not careful,” he says. “If you show a close-up of a tear, you tell the audience: this is emotional. Better sometimes not to show it.”

Just one tear remains in the finished cut.

Unlike conventional filmmaking, the score dictated every structural decision. Van Woerkum built what he calls a “visual score”, mapping scenes against the waveform of the recording inside his editing software. Crew members could read the narrative directly against the music.

Every shot was filmed with extra duration, giving flexibility in live performance. There are over 200 separate shots in the film with each triggered individually during the concert.

That is where van Woerkum’s onstage role becomes crucial. He acts almost as a soloist, responding to tempo, phrasing and dramatic choices from the conductor and orchestra.

“I’m really flowing with the music,” he says. “Every performance, even with the same piece, is different.”

Some sequences can be stretched or compressed by small percentages. Others, especially dance scenes, require tighter coordination. Van Woerkum watches the conductor constantly, adjusting timing in the moment to preserve the uncanny alignment of image and sound.

“If image and music are aligned perfectly, there is this magical synchronisation that really works.”

That flexibility also deepens the sense of collaboration. In Van Woerkum’s symphonic cinema, conductors are not expected to work to a click track or to predetermined timings. The interpretation remains alive.

Van Woerkum knows some purists will resist the concept. Why add images to a masterpiece that needs none?

“Music doesn’t need film,” he says plainly. “That is true.”

But he argues audiences often experience his productions less as visual interference than as a new kind of opera – a fresh interpretive layer placed beside the score, not over it.

“The film is not as dominant as people would think,” he says. “I leave a lot to the imagination, And maybe now this is a chance to visit the concert hall,” van Woerkum says, “because it is something new, and not something old.”

Sydney Symphony Orchestra presents Symphonic Cinema: The Planets, 1-3 May in the Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House.