Havergal Brian.

[cilgwyn]

I certainly will! The Stokowski is supposed to be a bit 'dodgy' though,isn't it?!

Quote from John: "Good news about the new Heritage double CD release by the way"!!!!!!!

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

'Dodgy', yes, but the music survives it...


The Heritage double CD refers to the re-release of the two LSSO LPs (10 & 21, and Psalm 23, Symphony 22 and English Suite No. 5), using the master tapes...

[cilgwyn]

Incidentally,I just had a look at the Cameo Classics website & I see they have reissued their Hull Youth SO recordings of Early Brian with a 'snazzy' new sleeve design (no order queues there,I suppose?!).....AND the HYSO recordings of Bantock's Pagan & Hebridean Symphonies,Witch of Atlas & Sapphic Poem (didn't know they recorded that). And the real suprise,in a way. Their recording of Holbrooke's Piano Concerto No1 'The Song of Gwyn ap Nudd' which is supposed to have flattened the entire enterprise!!! Hm?!! The thought of those wierdly off key strings scraping through Bantock's gorgeously,sumptuous music is hideously intriguing..........& just how bad was the Holbrooke? Was the piano out of tune,too? One of those old school jobs,perhaps;with keys missing?! Anyway,I think I'll hang onto my pennies!! Rather like the cover painting (on the Bantock) though!

Nice for the Hull Youth musician's though. Fair play to them. I just wish they'd been as good as the LSSO!

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

I'm still glad the HYSO did those early Brians! But English Suite No. 1 on the new Naxox CD is really something else... (Look at your PM Inbox, cilgwyn!)

[cilgwyn]

Regarding the Heritage 2 cd release of the LSSO Brian recordings.That's fantastic news! I'll have to order that,baliffs,or not!!

[cilgwyn]

I'm still glad the HYSO did those early Brians! But English Suite No. 1 on the new Naxox CD is really something else... (Look at your PM Inbox, cilgwyn!)

And I'm glad the Hull Youth SO recordings are being reissued. It's easy to knock them know,and still is I suppose,but their recordings were the only ones at the time. They were a window on unknown Brian. Frustrating,yes....but strange as it may seem now;they were once rather exciting. (I still prefer their performances of 'In Memoriam' & 'Festal Dance' to the professionally performed (no scrapey strings) but arid sounding Marco Polo recordings).
Not sure about the value of their Bantock,though. Amazing that anyone would even contemplate releasing stuff like that,back then;but I'm just not sure who'd want to hear it now?! Nice for ex members of the HYSO,though,to see their performances on cd!

I have now ordered a copy of the Naxos Brian cd from Naxos Direct. I think I have ordered from them before. The cover painting is by John Martin,I believe;a painter I like. Got to buy it,now!

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

John Martin, correct. Never a painter of placid landscapes, was John Martin.

[cilgwyn]

Hopefull,it'll arrive quickly. If I find some of Brian's writing too strenuous,I can always listen to one of those John Ireland piano cds in between!

Seriously,some of the Brian uploads here & at the AMF have been excellent;but one or two of the brian recordings in the 22 plus range have been unusually poor. I forget which ones. I can usually listen through virtually anything,but these later Brian symphonies do need the benefit of digital sound quality.

Indeed! They called him 'Mad Martin',didn't they! Apocalyptic,to say the least.'The Great Day of His Wrath' is a particularly famous one. Pretty mind boggling,really! Like the Gothic!!

[John Whitmore]

I thought I would post something about this new Heritage reissue. Around 4 years ago I tried to locate the masters of two LSSO recordings - the 1967 Pye LP of Tippett's Suite in D coupled with Mathias, Arnold and Ridout (still my favourite LSSO record) and the CBS Brian from 1974.  All my leads became dead ends so I packed it in. I then came across Klassic Haus and enquired about the availability of some of their titles as downloads. Curt Timmons kindly arranged for this to happen and I bought a couple of his titles.  We then exchanged emails and I sent him a small section of Brian 10 to see what he thought. He enjoyed the music, admitted a liking for Brian and was somewhat surprised that the performance was by children. My next step was to make good vinyl transfers of the two LSSO Brian LPs. I hated the official scrawny  sounding Unicorn CD release and the toppy CBS LP was always a travesty of what the orchestra actually sounded like. My transfers were repaired by Curt and since this time I have worked on around 30 titles with him, including 10 LSSO titles, all of which are pretty astonishing restorations. Out of the blue around 6 months ago I got an email from Sony who had found the CBS master tapes in their European archives. They offered to sell me a copy but the price was too high. I was relieved to find out that the tapes still existed and passed the information to Martyn Becker at the HBS suggesting that maybe they could chip in to buy the masters. Martyn then picked it up as a potential project. Regis have released many Unicorn recordings from the 1970s and their sister label, Heritage, specialises in relatively obscure repertoire. The manager of Heritage saw the possibility of a Unicorn/Sony CD twofer release and that's what they plan to do. I've been in touch with Martyn to see if he can influence the transfer engineer (EMI trained) to produce a sound close to the Klassic Haus restorations but without the residual vinyl background noise and end of side distortion. If they can achieve this we will have something special. I was asked to supply some notes for the reissue and these were done last week. I am hopeful!!

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

The manager of Heritage saw the possibility of a Unicorn/Sony CD twofer release and that's what they plan to do. I've been in touch with Martyn to see if he can influence the transfer engineer (EMI trained) to produce a sound close to the Klassic Haus restorations but without the residual vinyl background noise and end of side distortion. If they can achieve this we will have something special.

Yes, indeed!

[John Whitmore]

Incidentally,I just had a look at the Cameo Classics website & I see they have reissued their Hull Youth SO recordings of Early Brian with a 'snazzy' new sleeve design (no order queues there,I suppose?!).....AND the HYSO recordings of Bantock's Pagan & Hebridean Symphonies,Witch of Atlas & Sapphic Poem (didn't know they recorded that). And the real suprise,in a way. Their recording of Holbrooke's Piano Concerto No1 'The Song of Gwyn ap Nudd' which is supposed to have flattened the entire enterprise!!! Hm?!! The thought of those wierdly off key strings scraping through Bantock's gorgeously,sumptuous music is hideously intriguing..........& just how bad was the Holbrooke? Was the piano out of tune,too? One of those old school jobs,perhaps;with keys missing?! Anyway,I think I'll hang onto my pennies!! Rather like the cover painting (on the Bantock) though!

Nice for the Hull Youth musician's though. Fair play to them. I just wish they'd been as good as the LSSO!

So why isn't the Cameo LSSO recording being reissued then? That's a cracker (Douglas Young: Hunting of the Snark).

[calyptorhynchus]

1. John W "Uncanny but only if you have perfect pitch. Any old key will usually do for the vast majority." But the uncanny thing is I don't have perfect pitch, I have almost no sense of pitch. What was uncanny was that my subconscious told me to listen to Mahler's 9th, a symphony which shares the tonal scheme of Brian's 24th, which I didn't realise until I refreshed my memory by reading the liner notes. (in fact, just to prove I don't,when I first posted I had the idea that the whole triptych was based around D minor, in fact 22 is in around F minor, 23, C major/minor and only 24 D minor.)

2. Re Brian's rough polyphony, I find it's what makes his music vital and exhilarating, it makes it true to life in an Ivesian sense, in that every passage has elements and ideas that pull different ways.

3. Cilgwyn, I'm one of those who prefers the late Brian. I like the early orchestral pieces and the Gothic and the early symphonies (though I rarely listen to symphonies 2-5), but I find myself mostly listening to the symphonies 6 onwards. I find they get better and better (noting that after about 17 they lack a certain elemental quality). And Brian deliberately composes different types of symphony (ie set-piece classical form 21, classical 3 movement 18, 19, 20, 25 &c, this triptych, the less well defined final triptych of 30-32, and genuinely unclassifiable pieces like 26 and 28).

4. Re slow tempi in the final section of 24. I went back to the old radio recording of 24 and I don't like the slower tempi there because there are some chromatic ascending phrases that sound rather cloying when played at that tempo, but on the new recording (slightly faster), don't sound cloying.

5. Good news about the Heritage double issue of the LSSO recordings. Great work John. I will just add here that these recordings do contain the one Brian work I really can't stand, the Psalm 23. I like the Gothic and Symphony 4, but I'm glad Brian didn't write any more formal choral works!

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Nice post, calyptorhynchus. I concur with most of your points. The 'elemental' quality that seems to disappear after Symphony No. 17 - I want to add that you could also call it a certain mythical quality. But for me there are still moments of it in late Brian, in the apocalyptic outbursts in Symphonies 27, 30 and 31, for example. Re 24's closing section: I don't find those string phrases 'cloying' but yearning, and the slower ascent towards the end make the dissonances much more wrenching. As for Psalm 23, it's a bit stiff, but a few inspired passages are certainly there

[John Whitmore]

I found this in my collection of old reviews:
Hull Bantock Hebridean Symphony:
"It's impossible to make extravagant claims for this orchestra but the enterprise is laudatory and might conceivably stimulate some professional re-awakening in this composer. The engineers have wisely given us an atmospheric recording,emphasising Bantock's great wash of sound rather than highlighting the individual orchestral solos". I haven't heard the record. I have the Hyperion RPO Bantock CDs and they are excellent. Avoid the Naxos Hebridean Symphony, it's a shocker. Musically a lot of this stuff is luxuriant and hollow but some of it is wonderful. Bantock knew how to write for an orchestra, of that there is little doubt.

[cilgwyn]

Fantastic!!!
The Naxos cd came today. Right from the very beginning,it was pretty obvious that there is NO comparison whatsoever here,with those awful,drab,sterile,listless Marco Polo recordings! This pulled me in right from the start.with fantastic playing & excellent sound. Anyone who has been put off these later symphonies by files downloaded from here & the AMF MUST hear the performances on this cd! Of course,I don't mean to be rude;like anyone else I am very grateful for those downloads;but there is no doubt in my mind that these particular symphonies NEED to be heard in state of the art sound. And these performances have an urgency & momentum to them which leaves some of those earlier performances standing. Oh,and yes Johan;now you get to really hear & enjoy the moments of stillness & lyricism. Some truly fascinating orchestration,quite beautiful at times. No wonder you like these!
And then there's the English suite. I need to play it again,but,to pick out just one example  of the delights here;isn't 'Interlude' wonderful?! What a lovely piece of music. And 'Carnival'! Wow! So full of ideas,and the pre-echoes of Stravinsky's Petrushka! I could go on & on.......but I better not. I need another listen before posting more,anyway;but please Alexander Walker,if your conducting of HB is this good,can we have some more?!! (Look out Martyn Brabbins,you've got competition!)
Franz Schmidt's sublime third symphony on,now. A nice Brian connection,there. (What's wrong with it? Why don't orchestras,the world over, want to play it?!! Another story there!)

Thanks for the HYSO Bantock review,John. Nice to see the reviewer was kind to them,and let's face it;how could anyone be worse than that Marco Polo 'Hebridean'. That was my first hearing of the piece,and while I normally like to try & sound grateful;unlike their Holbrooke,which was 'dodgy',but committed;that Bantock recording was just,downright c***! For one thing,the brass didn't come out. Those clansmen! Did they have an off day? They certainly wouldn't have warded off any invaders with those bazooka's!! When I got the Handley performance I couldn't believe my ears. They blazed out! It was a different work. Thank goodness enthusiasts like me have been reared on dodgy off air recordings. Some people might be put off!

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Nice to see your Welsh roots in that hwyl-filled explosion, cilgwyn!

[cilgwyn]

Not quite sure what to make of that  .....but just imagine if the Marco Polo recordings had been that good?! (And there I was thinking I wouldn't like it!) In short one of the best Brian recordings to have come my way.

Incidentally,calyptorhyncus;I'm with you on the later symphonies. I just wasn't so sure about some of the ones in between 20 (bar 21) & 29. I think this new cd may have finally convinced me.
The more expansive,earlier symphonies may be more immeadiately appealing;but it's the cryptic nature of these later ones that makes them even more intriguing. In some ways they are a bit like a box of chocolates,with the hard centre on the outside! Well worth the effort & much to savour inside. Although,there's no caramel,or coffee creme,so that analogy ends there,I'm afraid! Luckily,I haven't got a sweet tooth,and Brian's symphonies last longer,anyway!

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

I also find this CD among the best of the new Brian recordings. And - as, I think, Dundonnell remarked - I sincerely hope Alexander Walker is allowed to make a few more!


Wait a sec - you said that, too, cilgwyn!

[cilgwyn]

In so many words! I'm even starting to think that this could be the cd to convince 'non believers' of the virtues of Brian's (post No10) later symphonies.

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Well, this CD contains the richest sampling so far of HB's later symphonies and it makes a persuasive case (though not for everyone, of course). I find No. 23 a very exciting work. It has certainly risen in my estimation.