Havergal Brian.

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Quote from: cilgwyn on Today at 02:21:21

But it does feel as if I've suddenly cracked open some really tough safe. It's too late to think of a really adequate comparison,but it is as if the craggy outer shell has fallen away & I'm really beginning to see & enjoy what's inside. What is suprising too,is just how lyrical & approachable the interior is. In fact,I would go so far as to say,what I'm hearing is actually more rewarding & enjoyable than some of the more outwardly accessible earlier symphonies.
I'm certainly not struggling any more!



I've had that experience a lot with Brian. But after the struggle, the music is as natural as can be. His language holds no secrets more for me.


>

Unfortunately,there is a problem with my burn of No 16. It broke off suddenly. No 17 is okay. Too late to sort out now!

Pity. Indeed - too late. I'm off to bed... Till next time. 

[cilgwyn]

My apologies,Johan. I am having some trouble with my GMG account. I only just saw you're message & what was in it. Thank you for this! I downloaded Opera (the browser) & unfortunately the email given in my profile is now defunct.To make matters worse,I seemed to have copied down the password incorrectly at some time & am unable to change my details. Unlike some sites there seems to be no way of contacting an administrator!

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

The Administrator is Rob. You can email him here under the name of Dungeon Master...

[cilgwyn]

Thank you. Talking about joined up writing! I ony discovered this after downloading Opera,which I understand you use,so I decided to try it out again. As it turned out it's a crummy wireless router,that's been slowing me down. I am now back on ye olde wired modem & I'm back to speed!

Going back to Brian! No 16 ended after about 10 mins! I shall have to check to see if something went wrong when I originally downloaded it. Or start my next cd-r compilation with No 17! I suppose,I am pretty familiar with No 16. Thanks to the famous Lyrita recording it is one of the most well known ones,I suppose. I just fancied hearing it in sequence. Something,I've been droning on about doing for a while,as you know,but various things have got in the way of me doing it until now. One of them being my dislike of downloads & cd-r's,but I seem to be overcoming that now. Cd's compilations that I can make up mysell? What's wrong with that?! I already have cds of symphonies 6 & 7 and another of the Holmes Violin Concerto & No 5! But there's still something about a cd & you can play it on even the oldest and dodgiest cd player,can't you! And there are a few here!

I am currently using cdburner xp! My cd-r's kept stopping after each track. Cdburner lets you burn without pauses, This solved the problem. Of course there may be a better cd burner out there that I am unaware of!? This one IS very easy to use!

Listening to those late symphonies I can only wish that a crack team like Myer Fredman*,the Lpo & Lyrita were able to record them today. I notice a reviewer of the Lyrita cd on Amazon expressing his belief that No 16 is Brian's greatest after the Gothic! Also,(and I don't know whether or not to believe everything I read there,but Brian WAS very well read) that when Brian wrote No 16,he was reading Herodutus's account of The Battle of Thermopylae!

Myer Fredman b.January 29th 1932. The same age as my parents!

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

I have all my Brian on my hard drive. Today I made a playlist with everything Brian wrote between symphonies No. 6 and 32, including concerti, overtures and opera fragments, and just listened to all the openings. Those of symphonies 8, 10, 18, 22 and 27 struck me the most. And a work I now rated more highly was No. 21. I think it is a perfect summation of symphonies 18-20 and, in the first movement, a harbinger of the aggressive symphonies 22, 23, 25 and 26. I wonder why Brian's style changed with No. 18.... There is a certain atmosphere in symphonies 6-17, which never returns.


I'd group the symphonies as follows, by the way: 1-5, 6-7, 8-17, 18-21, 21-26, 27-32.

[cilgwyn]

I'm going to have to print that post out! I AM still listening to those cd-r's. For Brian's worst symphonies,No's 13 & 14,sound pretty interesting to me! No 14 has a wonderful mysterious sounding opening & is,literally, packed with more incident than most symphonies put together. As usual,I find myself particularly drawn to the quieter passages,which remind me of that description of Brian's music as an 'unknown hinterland'. Well,I can't remember the exact quote. I think it might have been on the back of the Lyrita Lp,which I haven't seen for years (I downloaded the cd). I was also reminded of you'r suggestion that Brian's symphonies had more in common with Tolkein than those of Bax ( a comparison made in the Chandos booklet accompanying the Thomson set). Not that any of these symphonies have evoked images of Orc's or Balrog's,but sometimes they do evoke mental images of imaginary or even alien landscapes. Cyril Scott's Fourth does that,too,incidentally. I keep thinking of some strange,alien landscape when I listen to it! Maybe a distant planet,or a fictional one,like Perelandra (CS Lewis). Not that I am exactly into his books! (The only one of Scott's works that really grabs me,incidentally!)
  Of course,I shouldn't perhaps be thinking of things like this. These symphonies are 'abstract' works,they are not pictorial or descriptive,like those of Bantock,and I doubt that Brian was thinking about seascapes or landscapes in the way that Bax was. But,listening to the kind of fantastical aural landscapes that Brian evokes does have this effect,particularly late at night!

My accidental,blind & rather embarassing,considering some of my past observations,listen to the Naxos 15 has been particularly enlightening........even,revealing!

 

[cilgwyn]

I could now be in a small minority of 'Brianites' who rate Symphonies 13 & 14 as two of my favourites!

[calyptorhynchus]

... I was also reminded of you'r suggestion that Brian's symphonies had more in common with Tolkein than those of Bax ( a comparison made in the Chandos booklet accompanying the Thomson set). Not that any of these symphonies have evoked images of Orc's or Balrog's,but sometimes they do evoke mental images of imaginary or even alien landscapes. ...

Whenever I listen to Brian's music and hear these passages I think of WW1 battles and battlefields.

[calyptorhynchus]

Interesting thought about the grouping of the symphonies. My thoughts

1-5 agreed
6-7 agreed, except that they aren't very like each other and they're only a group because they fall between two other groups,

Then I'd say

8-12
13-21 (the Middle Period symphonies, except I'll have to listen to 17 and 18 again to see if I can see what you mean by the idea of break between those up to 17 and after 18). 21 seems to me to sum up these symphonies, then
22-24, a trilogy as Malcom Mac suggests
25-29 (MM's Classical phase)
30-32 The Late Symphonies

[cilgwyn]

An interesting trio of responses. Too late to analyse now. May mull over in between periods of sleep! Or even during?!!!
The louder passages certainly evoke battle. Nothing wrong with pictorial responses. It helps the mind forge the links between some of Brian's more elliptical passages. Especially,if you're a non musician,like me!

[John Whitmore]

An interesting trio of responses. Too late to analyse now. May mull over in between periods of sleep! Or even during?!!!
The louder passages certainly evoke battle. Nothing wrong with pictorial responses. It helps the mind forge the links between some of Brian's more elliptical passages. Especially,if you're a non musician,like me!

Music is written for non musicians, in the main, to listen to and enjoy. If you have to be a musician to like what you hear then the music is either failing to reach out or it's so intellectually (hate that word!) high brow that it's probably not worth the effort for the majority of people. For all Brian's faults at least his work is tonal, no nonsense and reaches out. This doesn't necessarily mean that it's either good or enjoyable and we all have our views on this but at least there aren't any pretentions. He was a very ordinary (in the best sense of the word) bloke. His music sort of reflects this. Don't bemoan being a non musician. This is an envious position to be in. You probably don't listen to every detail of execution with a jaundiced critical ear and the clumsiness of HBs writing maybe doesn't annoy you as it does to so many. Just use your ears and ignore the bull****. You don't need to be an author to enjoy War and Peace. So there.

[John Whitmore]

I have all my Brian on my hard drive. Today I made a playlist with everything Brian wrote between symphonies No. 6 and 32, including concerti, overtures and opera fragments, and just listened to all the openings. Those of symphonies 8, 10, 18, 22 and 27 struck me the most. And a work I now rated more highly was No. 21. I think it is a perfect summation of symphonies 18-20 and, in the first movement, a harbinger of the aggressive symphonies 22, 23, 25 and 26. I wonder why Brian's style changed with No. 18.... There is a certain atmosphere in symphonies 6-17, which never returns.


I'd group the symphonies as follows, by the way: 1-5, 6-7, 8-17, 18-21, 21-26, 27-32.

Never really cared much for 21 until I spent time doing the refurbishment of the LP some weeks ago. I'd not heard it for the best part of 20 years. All of a sudden I started to like it. The slow movement is glorious, very much in the same vein as the Reverie from the English Suite No.5 and the 3rd movement is mercurial and captivating. Am I right in saying that it was last played at Loughborough in 1972? Shameful really.

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

No. 21 has never been performed since, you're right. But with so many to choose from... The slow movement certainly has similarities with Reverie, though it is more symphonic in the way it develops its material. Reverie is more ruminative and lyrical. As I wrote to you in an email, your friend plays the violin solo in that slow movement remarkably, hauntingly well. Brian is always at his most moving and revealing in those solos. Symphony No. 20 is also very striking in that respect - the loneliness hits you. The very end of the Tenth (with the solo violin almost like a child in the night) always reminds me of the close of Ravel's 'L'Enfant et les Sortilèges', not musically, but in what it expresses - a soothing presence returns.

[John Whitmore]

You are right Johan, in 21 the ideas are more developed. I think the fiddle solos in 10 (Robert Heard) and Reverie (Graham Pyatt) are both very nicely done and really hit the mark. One critic actually accused the orchestra of employing an adult to play Reverie on the LP. Cheeky so and so. Aren't talented teenagers annoying? Thank goodness I was bog standard!

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

You must have been a very decent rank and file player, otherwise you'd never have been accepted into the LSSO in the first place.

[John Whitmore]

You must have been a very decent rank and file player, otherwise you'd never have been accepted into the LSSO in the first place.

I was compared to Heifetz in one of my dreams. At one particular violin lesson my teacher, Lambert Wilson - a wonderful Scots chap who played for the RSNO before moving south and taking up a teaching post in Leicestershire in 1962 - listened to me hack my way through a violin sonata, paused for a moment and then told me I played it with all the passion of a piece of wet Haddock. Best review I ever got In this era of dumbing down I bet a modern day teacher would proclaim my playing as being soulful and magnificent.

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Quote from: John Whitmore on Today at 13:51:08

In this era of dumbing down I bet a modern day teacher would proclaim my playing as being soulful and magnificent.



Janine Jansen's brother John.

[Karl Henning]

I was compared to Heifetz in one of my dreams.

And to Heifetz's disadvantage . . . .

[John Whitmore]

And to Heifetz's disadvantage . . . .

Yep. Jascha was a shocker wasn't he.

[cilgwyn 2]

I have had to re-register as Cilgwn 2 as I have been locked out after attempting to update my email. Unfortunately,the forum demands a password & if you can't log in you are not able to contact the administrator! This after a thousand odd posts here as Veteran member Cilgwyn! Could the moderator (or admin) please contact me,preferably though the messaging facility here,or & the email I gave when re-registering as cilgwyn 2? Thanks!

Other than that,I would love to post something else about Havergal Brian here!