Havergal Brian.

[Androcles]

Doesn't this vary from piece to piece. I mean, the transcendental etude for xylophone in the Gothic sounds pretty hard.

I wonder whether, as with Second Viennese School, the problem is interpretive rather than with the technical difficulty of the music, at least in many of the pieces.

[John Whitmore]

Doesn't this vary from piece to piece. I mean, the transcendental etude for xylophone in the Gothic sounds pretty hard.

I wonder whether, as with Second Viennese School, the problem is interpretive rather than with the technical difficulty of the music, at least in many of the pieces.

There's nothing in Brian to worry a pro orchestra. I'll get feedback on the xylo solo. I know the bloke who played it with the LSO under Schmidt (he also timped on the LSSO Unicorn).

[John Whitmore]

Doesn't this vary from piece to piece. I mean, the transcendental etude for xylophone in the Gothic sounds pretty hard.

I wonder whether, as with Second Viennese School, the problem is interpretive rather than with the technical difficulty of the music, at least in many of the pieces.

I asked my friend the following question on Facebook:

Serious question for you. Some Havergal Brian followers are discussing the xylophone solo in the Gothic. Is it just a bog standard solo for a pro player,slightly tricky, difficult or what? Ta.

Here is his reply:

Having just about recovered from the shock of you saying something serious......   Yes, the xylophone solo in the Gothic Symphony is indeed extremely difficult. It doesn't go on for very long, but it's very nasty while it lasts. I assume you have a recording of the piece, and possibly also a score, but if you haven't, I can send you both if you like, the recording being the Ole Schmidt performance at the Albert Hall with the LSO, with yours truly playing the xylophone. Since I was principal percussion on that occasion I also had to organise the enormous percussion section. Nightmare. I couldn't possibly comment about the standard of the xylophone playing, but one of the members of the boys' choir was so overcome he fainted and crashed down into the percussion section.

So there you have it. Pretty definitive from the horse's mouth.

[timh1]

On Monday 21st November BBC Radio 3
Havergal Brian: Symphony No.6 'Sinfonia tragica'
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Martyn Brabbins (conductor).

new performance

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0833vgz

[vandermolen]

On Monday 21st November BBC Radio 3
Havergal Brian: Symphony No.6 'Sinfonia tragica'
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Martyn Brabbins (conductor).

new performance

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0833vgz

Thanks for this link - one of his greatest symphonies I think.

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Thanks for this link - one of his greatest symphonies I think.

Seconded.


Will listen.

[Maestro267]

Am listening right now as I write (first time hearing the 6th Symphony), and within the first two minutes come two of Brian's finest hallmarks, his writing for low brass and tuned percussion. Also, it sounds like there's offstage brass involved as well.

[relm1]

I asked my friend the following question on Facebook:

Serious question for you. Some Havergal Brian followers are discussing the xylophone solo in the Gothic. Is it just a bog standard solo for a pro player,slightly tricky, difficult or what? Ta.

Here is his reply:

Having just about recovered from the shock of you saying something serious......   Yes, the xylophone solo in the Gothic Symphony is indeed extremely difficult. It doesn't go on for very long, but it's very nasty while it lasts. I assume you have a recording of the piece, and possibly also a score, but if you haven't, I can send you both if you like, the recording being the Ole Schmidt performance at the Albert Hall with the LSO, with yours truly playing the xylophone. Since I was principal percussion on that occasion I also had to organise the enormous percussion section. Nightmare. I couldn't possibly comment about the standard of the xylophone playing, but one of the members of the boys' choir was so overcome he fainted and crashed down into the percussion section.

So there you have it. Pretty definitive from the horse's mouth.

A bit overly dramatic, but did he say why it was so difficult?  I want to know what makes it so difficult.

[calyptorhynchus]

I've just been listening to Brabbins 6th online. Then of course I had to go and listen to Fredman and Walker's performances too.

Well Brabbins' performance was another great one to stand alongside the other two; I thought previously that Fredman's was more emotionally involved, Walker's more detached. Brabbins seems to line up with Fredman, though perhaps this is emphasised more by the close recording which makes the timpani, the bass instruments and the side drums more prominent than in the other recordings (though some parts of the orchestra are less prominent, for example Brabbins harp is nowhere near as prominent as Walker's magnificent sweeping and swirling harp (very appropriate in the symphony on an Irish legend)).

Anyway,, good to have another performance to listen to.

[Maestro267]

Just a heads-up that there will be more Brian on Radio 3 this Sunday. They're doing a day-long sequence celebrating each of the BBC's orchestras and choirs, and Sunday morning's focus on the National Orchestra of Wales will (apparently) include a Havergal Brian work. What that work is, I don't yet know.

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Thanks, maestro, for the info.


The Brabbins Sixth - just listened to it, finally. I thought it was excellent. As always, he has a very clear view of what the music is about and how it has to move. Tempi were well-judged. The opening had more urgency than any of the other performances. And from that moment on, I knew we were in safe hands. So, all in all: a great addition to this symphony's recording history.


If there is one thing that I am less enthusiastic about, it's the venue and the terribly dry acoustic. This is the same place where Brian's Third was recorded for Hyperion, and I was there, in 1988, at a preparatory performance. Because the music cannot really breathe, I don't get any sense of landscape. The pictures conjured up are cool and clinical. This performance takes place in a laboratory. I don't like it.


Still - great performance, and well-moulded.

[John Whitmore]

A bit overly dramatic, but did he say why it was so difficult?  I want to know what makes it so difficult.

It's basically fast and furious and very awkwardly written. The real emphasis being on the awkward bit - true about so much of Brian's writing. His orchestration quite often doesn't take into account what is comfortably possible on some of the instruments. He's not the only culprit though - Rachmaninov Symphonic Dances, first movement: first fiddle parts are a nightmare in places (crossing strings at pace) but a piece of cake on the piano, for which the work was originally written. Another example - the low oboe note in Ma Vlast - a complete horror especially when it has to be played pp. The difference is that these examples are passing moments. Brian does it on a regular basis. That's not meant as a criticism, just statement of the way things are with him.

[Maestro267]

I've been informed that the Brian scheduled for broadcast on Sunday is an excerpt from the Proms performance of the Gothic.

[Leggiero]

There's a wonderful series of recording-heavy podcasts surveying Brian's works here (http://www.classicalpodcasts.com/). There was a further podcast of theirs devoted just to the Gothic Symphony a few years back.

[For anyone who may have happened across a near-identical post to this on another forum, yes, I'm shamelessly repeating myself in the hope of generating further discussion!]

[calyptorhynchus]

I listened to the first podcast and while it was an excellent opportunity to hear HB pieces for those who hadn't heard any, I felt it was a bit of flop because it didn't offer an introduction or further information about the pieces. Although I think the music is self-evidently interesting and striking I felt a few remarks about who Brian was, what his musical influences were, something about his career &c might have added to the podcast.

Oh, and there was a mistake, the extracts are played chronologically but in the first podcast we get The Tinker's Wedding Overture. I think the podcaster thought it was composed for the premiere of the play in 1905, not later, in 1948, as is the case!

[Leggiero]

I listened to the first podcast and while it was an excellent opportunity to hear HB pieces for those who hadn't heard any, I felt it was a bit of flop because it didn't offer an introduction or further information about the pieces. Although I think the music is self-evidently interesting and striking I felt a few remarks about who Brian was, what his musical influences were, something about his career &c might have added to the podcast.

Oh, and there was a mistake, the extracts are played chronologically but in the first podcast we get The Tinker's Wedding Overture. I think the podcaster thought it was composed for the premiere of the play in 1905, not later, in 1948, as is the case!

I think you're right about the overture, and yes, in an ideal world there'd be a bit more background, but the presenter says explicitly at the beginning that he won't be dwelling on biographical details that can be Googled easily enough...and, for me, the fact that these podcasts exist at all is a great thing!

[snyprrr]

OK, today it's happening... NOW!!

1) Symphony No.31: I was going to go backwards from 32, but, am I right that there's no vid? So, 31 was my first (I've previously heard No.10 on YT) of the day. Well, I love the "Christmas" feel of the opening, but, by the end of its 14min. span, I had indeed been herded around quite a few mood changes, so quite abrupt! So, if I had wanted "pure" nostalgia, well then, Brian was going to subvert that in a very... "English Ives"?? way? meaning, he's no where near as wild as Ives, but still has that certain "let's mess with expectations", or "quirky", "don't give a poof",... but in a much more congenial way than Ives. Perhaps more like early, Synphony No.1 Ives? But English,... more "pastoral" sounding... "an English country play"??...

So, I enjoyed 31 about... 8-9/10... it was nice and short, gruff, bluff, windy, sunny strings, I'd say 1927- had it been written then it'd be called a Masterpiece?

2) Symphony No.28: I enjoyed this one just a wee bit more than 31. It's not all that much longer, one basic movement, divided. I did especially "see" the pastoral images of the slow mvmt. Malipiero+Ives...... very normal music made great by being obviously written by a human hand, and not "five bars until the modulation" theory.

3) Symphony No.29: Seems to continue right on from 28, but with just a slight more "drama", not so different, but just enough to make the two flow perfectly together. I'm on the slow mvmt. now, not as lush as 28, a little more reserved, but redolent of all the pastoral sounds I love to hear- and the phrases and metres are constantly changing, not four square.


His use of the bell like melody intoning sounds (and triangle) does give a very Christmas feel to the music. I like it! He's just enough "modern" for me, in just the right way, for "old fashioned normal music". I still think this could all have been done in the '20s, but, I NEED this music to be written when it was, to counter Xenakis, lol! Still, it does remind me a bit of Ives+Malipiero+cowpat (the pat wins out, lol).....

4) Symphony No.27: much longer... I listened through the first mvmt., even much more pastoral than the previous two, and a bit more anonymous, very much background pastoral, soothing to just let run...

5) Symphony 15:  can't find 32, or 30,... 15 is medium-long,... doesn't seem as hung together as 28-29,,, Sunday morning in the town square feeling... Brian seems always to have big fluffy clouds on a sunny day feel, fantasy-utopia-pastoral-with pompy brass heralds... again, cowpat-Ives... public television Brit?.... again I hear Malipiero...

I won't make it to end, must go...

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Thanks for those impressions ! I think the whole idea of 'if it had been written in the 1920s' et cetera misses the point. Art history is multi-track. Brian wrote his best works between 1948 and 1968, in a style that is recognisably his, a mix of Romantic, Baroque and Modern. I like it.

[snyprrr]

Thanks for those impressions ! I think the whole idea of 'if it had been written in the 1920s' et cetera misses the point. Art history is multi-track. Brian wrote his best works between 1948 and 1968, in a style that is recognisably his, a mix of Romantic, Baroque and Modern. I like it.

I like it!


Symphony No.15: from above, didn't finish, ... not sure how I felt about what I heard, maybe not my fav...

Symphony No.14: Well, OF COURSE!!, who wouldn't like THAT opening?? Very nice and moody, wintry. Here's one
                                      I'll have to come back to.

Symphony No.13: this one seemed a bit too obvious to me, too normal sounding, quite martial and pompy. This one
                                      I just didn't feel for at all. No.14 is the only one so far that had me from the get-go, in such an
                                      obviously neat-o, moody manner (I hope it keeps on going like that...)...


ok, which one is next?    6 or 17

[cilgwyn]

I say 6!