Salisbury Cathedral pipe organ will breathe new life into Holst’s Planets

The cathedral’s principal organist, John Challenger, sits at the ‘Father’ Willis organ, which he describes as a ‘thrilling thing’. Photograph: Steve Parsons/PA

A unique performance of Gustav Holst’s masterwork The Planets – played on a magnificent pipe organ rather than by an orchestra and punctuated by poems inspired by children’s responses to the music – is to be staged in the suitably vast Salisbury Cathedral.

The idea of the community music project is to introduce more people, young and old, to the 140-year-old “Father” Willis organ, one of the treasures of the cathedral.