Apollo 11 mission is focus of Pops interstellar musical journey
If anyone doubts the deep, abiding hold outer space has on the human race, the Boston Pops provided proof positive last night at Symphony Hall, where high culture, pop culture, the academic elite, and one bona fide astronaut collided in the name of interstellar entertainment.
The concert was part of MIT's "Giant Leaps" symposium marking the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission (variations on the same theme will take place tonight and tomorrow) and it's hard to imagine a more credibly thrilling narrator for Holst's "The Planets" than Buzz Aldrin, one of the two men who first walked on the moon 40 years ago. In the interest of time, the solar system was trimmed down: Mars, Venus, Uranus, and Jupiter made the cut. But the music, rendered by Keith Lockhart and the orchestra with stirring purpose and celestial sweetness as needed, made an often striking accompaniment (or was it the other way around?) to video footage produced by Chicago's Adler Planetarium. Aldrin, a strong reader armed with a poetically factual script, lent an air of verité to the proceedings.
That's where reality ended, however, and fantasy began. If music is emotional shorthand, famous soundtracks are wormholes to the psyche. With due respect to both Strausses (Richard and Johann Jr., respectively), the Opening Fanfare from "Also Sprach Zarathustra" and "Blue Danube" will forever belong to a certain generation of moviegoers who are astral-projected with a mere smattering of notes to the warped space/time of "2001: A Space Odyssey." A pitch-perfect programming choice: mission accomplished.
Less transporting but still apropos was the main title from "Star Wars," composed by Pops laureate conductor John Williams, who was well represented on the program. Technically speaking, those five tones from "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" have entered the sci-fi lexicon, but only barely. And when "Close Encounters" was followed by a short film chronicling the quest to reach the moon, with a score by Williams, a whiff of nepotism brought us back to terra firma.
The rest of the program flirted shamelessly with kitsch. Even Trekkies can agree that the theme from the original "Star Trek" television show, for all the fond memories of boldly going where no man has gone before, is completely cheesy.
The evening ended on a genuinely evocative note, with the Boston Children's Chorus joining the Pops for a lovely rendition of John Lennon's "Imagine," a prayer for peace on earth. Now that would be a giant leap.
Joan Anderman can be reached at anderman@globe.com. 
