Havergal Brian.

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

I like the Fourth, Sarge. I don't think it's been done justice yet, though.

[Sergeant Rock]

I like the Fourth, Sarge. I don't think it's been done justice yet, though.

Since Naxos (Marco Polo) has already recorded it, we're unlikely to see another version soon. I dream about a 4 and 5 coupling...the Fifth to soothe the savage beast after listening to 4 

Sarge

[cilgwyn]

That does it! The Poole Fourth is going in the cd changer tomorrow!!

[John Whitmore]

That does it! The Poole Fourth is going in the cd changer tomorrow!!

Poor old CD changer. I doubt whether or not it will survive.

[cilgwyn]

It might just blow it up!

I went to put on Das Siegeslied,for some reason I seem to have disposed of my cdr of the Poole performance and my cd of the Marco Polo recording,so I had to put the Handford performance in. The sound is a bit ragged,but pretty good,clear & detailed. Any thoughts on this performance,I have switched on the cordless headphones part way through,so I haven't heard it all. I must look the performance details up on the HBS website now. The soloist in the second movement is Honor Sheppard I believe (the details are on the cdr). I haven't heard her yet. How does she compare to Felicity Palmer?
I will make a new cdr of the Poole!

Ah,the second movement is on now.........

[cilgwyn]

Honor Sheppard's voice is a little thinner,less sensuous! Could be worse could be better! A bit too staid/prim,but she's okay? Felicity palmer sounds more evil!!
Ooh,that high note was a bit of a reach for her! Like the handling of that big orchestral climax though! The pacing of the orchestral section is a bit slow though! More ferocity perhaps! The choirs are good though!
I think I could live with this performance if there was no Poole! I see it's a 1967 performance. An old tape' I wonder what sort of machine it was recorded on (the geek in me!). It's probably in very good nick for it's age.

The choirs are good,but the pacing lack the ferocity of the Poole. Felicity Palmer is the better soloist. She's more sensuous/erotic,in an 'evil' kind of way. I'm quite enjoing this.though. I just hope it's not one of those Aries jobs under a false name (ie Aaagh! I was listening to the Poole!! )

By sheer coincidence I took some soluble Panadol tablets before listening to this! Just a coincidence of course!!

[cilgwyn]

The Panadol must have helped I actually enjoyed Das Siegeslied!! As if that isn't enough I have just been to the Klassikhaus website and bought their FLAC of 4 & 5!!!

Disclaimer: Other brands of painkiller are widely available! (That was the one in my cupboard!)

[Sergeant Rock]

The Panadol must have helped I actually enjoyed Das Siegeslied!! As if that isn't enough I have just been to the Klassikhaus website and bought their FLAC of 4 & 5!!!

I dream about a 4 and 5 coupling...the Fifth to soothe the savage beast after listening to 4 

Sarge

How silly of me. The coupling has already been done, of course, and I have it in my collection!





This memory lapse must be God's way of telling me I have too many CDs 

Sarge

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

I like your Siegeslied adventure tale, cilgwyn.  I think I'll dust off that Handford performance later tonight. Oh, I suddenly remember I can listen to it through the HBS Recordings Library, too. Sound quality there may be better...

Re Sarge - you're so much richer than you can remember...

[Sergeant Rock]

Re Sarge - you're so much richer than you can remember...

Once upon a time I was richer...before I bought all these damn CDs.

Sarge

[John Whitmore]

The Panadol must have helped I actually enjoyed Das Siegeslied!! As if that isn't enough I have just been to the Klassikhaus website and bought their FLAC of 4 & 5!!!

Disclaimer: Other brands of painkiller are widely available! (That was the one in my cupboard!)

I helped restore this stuff to CD. I am quite ashamed to be named on the CD case to be honest. Enjoy the FLACs

[Sergeant Rock]

I helped restore this stuff to CD. I am quite ashamed to be named on the CD case to be honest. Enjoy the FLACs

Well, we certainly appreciate your effort, your contribution, even if you can't.

Sarge

[cilgwyn]

Your dream came true Sarge! Would you mind dreaming finding the score of Prometheus Unbound for us next please?!! I hope mine don't come true! I'm going to be dodging allot of Cheese monsters!! I see a  Kung Fu course being booked in the near future!

I enjoyed the Handford performance,albeit with the aforementioned reservations. I looked for Honor Sheppard cds on Amazon. Less well known or recorded than Felicity Palmer I note she was in the Boult Gothic and,judging by what is available on cd,appears to have focused her recording career on Handel and Purcell. Handel having some relevance here with respect to the opening of No 4.


It strikes me that the Handford performance may be more appealing to those who find No 4 a little bombastic or OTT? Less driven and with Sheppard's more 'English' (Church of) approach! Amazing to have a  recording so old in such good sound. I wonder who supplied it?

[John Whitmore]

Here's another of my efforts (in conjunction with Curt Timmons) released yesterday by Cameo Classics. Technically very good. Don't like the music. http://www.wyastone.co.uk/havergal-brian-the-complete-music-for-piano.html

[John Whitmore]

Totally off topic but here's another of my transfers just released today by Cameo. Not HB but the piece by Crumb is sensational and the playing and recording are well up to par.
http://www.wyastone.co.uk/east-west-encounters.html

[Dundonnell]

Only 66. But I know he had had an operation last year. I think there must have been some disastrous relapse. Perhaps Dundonnell (Colin Mackie) knows more. Malcolm was his friend for most of his life.

Malcolm told me about 18 months ago that he was suffering from aggressive cancer. He had been diagnosed with the disease but a fall, in which his pelvis had shattered, had confirmed just how far it had spread. He insisted however that he felt fine, that the treatment with various drugs was holding the spread at bay and that his oncologist was extremely surprised at how well he actually felt. Malcolm's cheerful optimism was inspirational. He continued to write with all that marvellous, eloquent and so knowledgeable enthusiasm that always infused his work. He was able to travel and to take holidays. When I corresponded with him the disease was barely mentioned; indeed I almost forgot at times that he was ill and that the longterm prognosis could not possibly be good. From time to time there was the odd, almost throwaway line about blood transfusions but said with such seeming nonchalance that one got the impression that this was a run-of-the mill occurance which anybody might have to endure.

So innured had I become to the seriousness of his illness that last Tuesday evening I was telling some friends over a drink in a sun-dappled Scottish garden how well Malcolm was doing......only to return home to find the news that he was dead. I understand that it was only in the last week before his death that the final decline set in and that the death was peaceful and that he was in a hospice near to his lovely home in Gloucestershire.

So much has been written about his books on HB. I am fortunate enough to have all three with lovely inscriptions from the author. I also possess copies of his very early first thoughts on Brian in the little book he wrote for the Triad Press (as well as his books on Brahms and Schoenberg). I also have Malcolm's first attempt at a catalogue of HB's music, written on an ancient typewriter sometime in the mid to late 1960s.

But I principally remember him now as my closest and dearest friend during the most formative period of my young adult life. From the age of 14 until he went off to Cambridge in 1966 but again all through the long university vacations we spent most of our time in each other's company, talking incessantly about music, about those aspects of History in which he was most interested(Roman and Naval History), about the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien. To describe Malcolm's conversation as stimulating does absolutely no justice to the amazing breadth of his knowledge and to the inspiritational impact of contact with a mind like his. Malcolm was a naturally shy young man and we fed off the common interests which we discovered in each other.

When he went up to Cambridge-the year after I had gone to Edinburgh University-he discovered a completely new world, full of music and a intensely vivid and fresh intellectual environment. He made new friends. Having completed a degree in English he then took a one-year degree in Music (in which he was entirely self-taught). Yet every week for those four years he took the time to pen a lengthy letter recounting his life, his experiences and, above all, his musical discoveries. He attended the Boult Gothic in London in 1966 and that same night, after returning late to Cambridge, sat down and wrote out his initial impressions of the work at length in a letter which (along with all his other letters) I have carefully preserved.

Travel between Scotland and the South of England was not as straightforward forty years ago for young people with fastidious tastes but little money and, for a long time time, Malcolm made very little money indeed out of writing about music. We saw very little of each other over the last few decades.....sadly. Yet I still regarded him as my oldest friend (and I hoped he shared my nostalgic recollections of those days of our youth). I know-now more than ever-that the person I am today has been shaped to an extraordinarily substantial degree by that youthful exposure to a mind of such brilliance.

If I have written at length and so very personally I make no apology. I know and appreciate how much Malcolm's writings touched the lives of others. But I wanted to share the way in which Malcolm himself helped to shape me.

[John Whitmore]

Very well said Colin. I hope you are OK. He was a very talented man.

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Beautiful tribute, Colin. And thanks for all the extra information about Malcolm's illness and final year.

[vandermolen]

Wonderful tribute Colin.

[cilgwyn]

Indeed! Malcolm MacDonald will be greatly missed.
His passing has got me listening to Brian's music again as if with new ears! Even some I thought I didn't enjoy as much as I used to! It's like I just read vol 1 of his book on the Brian symphonies again. Strange! What is happening?!! I even bought the Naxos reissue of Das Siegeslied & No 12 late last night. I'd taken my original Marco Polo copy to the YMCA!! Don't ask me why?!!
I've got No's 6-17 in the cd changer,playing in sequence,right now (Sennheiser cordless headphones. Brian while you work!! )