Havergal Brian.

[vers la flamme]

As you rightly worked out these are off-air radio broadcasts.  The same broadcasts that have been praised earlier in this thread in their "Heritage" releases.  I assume they have used different off-air recording sources unless they have had access to the BBC master tapes - someone here will know!

But of course there is quite a price difference between the Heritage and Klassichaus releases.  If you get into Brian then I'd say all of the Klassichaus/Heritage are worth hearing although - with a couple of exceptions - I prefer the better quality of the more modern studio verisons to allow the detail of Brian's often complex scoring to register.  Klassichaus also have some of the famous Leicestershire Schools Symphony Orchestra recordings of Brian which were literally ground-breaking at the time and in fact for a youth orchestra they play these pieces very well - there were a lot of young players there who went onto be top professionals (back in the day when the UK government and Local Education Authorities funded such things.... don't get me started......)

I enjoyed that disc earlier! As you say that the recordings are all worth hearing, are there any of Brian's symphonies that you see as highlights among his work?

[calyptorhynchus]

I enjoyed that disc earlier! As you say that the recordings are all worth hearing, are there any of Brian's symphonies that you see as highlights among his work?

This is the point at which everyone starts listing their favourites! I think I'm correct to say that the following HB symphonies are well-regarded by most Brianites:

The Gothic, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 16, 21, 22-23, 27, 29, 30, 31

[relm1]

Brian is an interesting composer partially because he has quite a lot of range.  His late symphonies come from a relatively short period of time so have a more uniform style of brevity and conciseness plus to me at least, a bit of mania.  Some other works have a maximalist quality (the early Symphonies 1 to 4).  I also happen to love his very early, more English traditional music too.  There is a beautiful and lyrical side to him too.  No. 5 and 24 (from the recent Myer Fredman heritage was just gorgeous).  This last section makes me want to explore his songs because though I've never heard them, aside from his more overt styles, he can also be a lyricist full of lovely and delicate emotions.  That is a massive range when you think about it.  Throughout all this and his career longevity, his distinctive voice is always clear. 

[Luke]

I've said it before, but not for a while, so I'll repeat myself - for me Brian's finest symphony has always been the 8th, and that's because it's the one where his method of juxtaposition works with the most inexorable dramatic force. It has a kind of centrifugal pull (or do I mean centripental?), in which the contrast from one section to the next becomes more extreme, and in general the sections become shorter, to a shattering degree, so that his usual textural technique becomes especially telling and expressive. It contains some of Brian's most radiant lyricism and also some of his most powerfully rhythmic, martial music, each cutting across the other. Because the material is so strong, never anonymous but always very well characterised, the music never seems fragmented and the form is always compelling and clear. The Gothic is very special for its own reasons, of course, and actually marvellously structured, too (the final twenty minutes or so, where everything draws together and you feel like you are holding your breath, is miraculous music). But it is the 8th, for me, that is Brian, at his very best.

[Luke]

I'd also extend each side of the 8th, because I think everything from 6-10 is top drawer and communicates really strongly and easily.

[vers la flamme]

^ Many thanks to the three of you. This should help.

I don't think I'm ready for the Gothic—I've heard it all before, at least once, but not all together. Some day in the future when I have two hours to kill I'll try it start to finish; until then I'm actually enjoying listening to his other, shorter symphonies. The Klassik Haus thing I downloaded is proving to be really good.

[Luke]

You could just go for the first three movements of The Gothic - the part before the Te Deum. It's a complete symphony in itself, but not inordinately long, and listening to it on its own is 'allowed.' It is also a good entry point into Brian's style - you listen along as he finds his own way, each movement masterly but growing more confidently Brianic as they progress. By the end of the third movement you have reached a pretty exalted plane.

[calyptorhynchus]

One question not posed by MacDonald's books is the influence of Brian's music. I suppose this is because when the books were written it was only a few years since the BBC had completed the broadcasts of the symphonies and so MacDonald felt that there hadn't been enough time for Brian's influence to be felt.

I was listening to the Symphonies 2 & 3 (1992, 1999) of John Geddes, a Scottish composer, and detected a Brianic influence (alongside Tippett and other influences). Worth a listen, Symphony No.2 on Youtube, No.3 from Albion's archive.

[Leggiero]

I think I've heard, and liked, the symphonies of John Geddes in the past - time for me to revisit them, perhaps...

One "influenced by" name that springs to mind is my acquaintance Steve Elcock, another composer who spent decades writing music in obscurity before finally being picked up by Toccata Classics (in his 60s)...prompting a very Brianic later-life resurgence in compositional activity! A clear example for me of influence is the start of his 3rd Symphony - very much like the opening of Brian 8. Available on all the usual streaming suspects, and also (to a more limited extent) on YouTube.

[Ashen Pathfinder]

Hope you are all doing well! I'm very happy to find a community of fellow Brian supporters! 

Been on a bit of a Brian binge lately. The Gothic fully connected to me and I have been really expanding my repertoire with him! Heck; I even think his second symphony is severely underrated, even tho it took a LONG time to finally 'get' it!

[relm1]

Hope you are all doing well! I'm very happy to find a community of fellow Brian supporters! 

Been on a bit of a Brian binge lately. The Gothic fully connected to me and I have been really expanding my repertoire with him! Heck; I even think his second symphony is severely underrated, even tho it took a LONG time to finally 'get' it!

Welcome Ashen!  There are many of us passionate Brianophiles around here as you can see judging by this thread being 413 pages!  My first encounter with Brian was Groves cassette tape which included No. 8 and No. 9 together.  After that was the Gothic which bowled me over too.

[Ashen Pathfinder]

Welcome Ashen!  There are many of us passionate Brianophiles around here as you can see judging by this thread being 413 pages!  My first encounter with Brian was Groves cassette tape which included No. 8 and No. 9 together.  After that was the Gothic which bowled me over too.

I appreciate that! Thanks! 

The Gothic was my first exposure to Brian! I was looking for organ/orchestral music and the Gothic (Lenard/Bratislava) popped up. It grabbed me from the first bar!

I still have so much to listen to tho!

[vandermolen]

I've said it before, but not for a while, so I'll repeat myself - for me Brian's finest symphony has always been the 8th, and that's because it's the one where his method of juxtaposition works with the most inexorable dramatic force. It has a kind of centrifugal pull (or do I mean centripental?), in which the contrast from one section to the next becomes more extreme, and in general the sections become shorter, to a shattering degree, so that his usual textural technique becomes especially telling and expressive. It contains some of Brian's most radiant lyricism and also some of his most powerfully rhythmic, martial music, each cutting across the other. Because the material is so strong, never anonymous but always very well characterised, the music never seems fragmented and the form is always compelling and clear. The Gothic is very special for its own reasons, of course, and actually marvellously structured, too (the final twenty minutes or so, where everything draws together and you feel like you are holding your breath, is miraculous music). But it is the 8th, for me, that is Brian, at his very best.

My vote too for Symphony No.8

[krummholz]

I would have a hard time voting for a single "greatest" Brian symphony. I've posted my top 5 before (3, 8, 16, 22, 30), but if I had to narrow it down to just 2 or 3, I would be hard pressed to choose between #8, #16, and #30. #30, in particular, is the late Brian symphony that just blows me away every time, with its passacaglia-like opening that offers no reduction in tension for the first 4 minutes or so, then the constantly shifting textures of the latter pages of the first movement, a narrative that continues through the second up until just before the coda. My overall impression, after the opening pages, is of a very compressed, even telescoped, synopsis of the moods of a play... and that might even be an accurate impression, as Brian had been working on an opera based on a Sophocles play (I think Oedipus at Colonnus? Or was it Agamemnon?) but was also concerned about getting the right too use the translation. Reportedly, he promised that the music would survive even if he had to table the opera, and then a few weeks later, the Symphony appeared. IMHO one of his very finest.

[foxandpeng]

I would have a hard time voting for a single "greatest" Brian symphony. I've posted my top 5 before (3, 8, 16, 22, 30), but if I had to narrow it down to just 2 or 3, I would be hard pressed to choose between #8, #16, and #30. #30, in particular, is the late Brian symphony that just blows me away every time, with its passacaglia-like opening that offers no reduction in tension for the first 4 minutes or so, then the constantly shifting textures of the latter pages of the first movement, a narrative that continues through the second up until just before the coda. My overall impression, after the opening pages, is of a very compressed, even telescoped, synopsis of the moods of a play... and that might even be an accurate impression, as Brian had been working on an opera based on a Sophocles play (I think Oedipus at Colonnus? Or was it Agamemnon?) but was also concerned about getting the right too use the translation. Reportedly, he promised that the music would survive even if he had to table the opera, and then a few weeks later, the Symphony appeared. IMHO one of his very finest.

Listening to #30 now, at your reminder

I do need to spend more time to figure out how much I like Brian's music. I like #8 and #10, but don't seem to have much stamina through some of the less immediate works.

[calyptorhynchus]

BBC Radio Three are going to play a piece by Brian this week. Let's see, a composer who wrote 32 symphonies and five operas... Nah, they're going to play Legend for Violin and Piano. 

[Maestro267]

Because they have a Proms performance from last year in the archive.

[calyptorhynchus]

I've been doing that most dangerous of things, thinking about the Gothic, and from simply marvelling at its size and accomplishment I have come to an Interpretation of it. This is what I think:

When I first got to know the Gothic Symphony I assumed that as Brian showed no obvious signs of an interest in conventional Christianity anywhere else in his work or correspondence then the choice of the text of the Te Deum for the Gothic Symphony was a case of finding a convenient text on which to hang the remarkable music of the final three movements, with a nod toward Christianity as the motivating force behind the Gothic period. (I accept the argument that the choice of a Psalm text in German for the Symphony No.4 was for the purposes of exposing the Nazi doctrine of Macht und Kraft, rather than for devotional reasons).
However, with repeated listening I now believe that Brian's Gothic Symphony is in fact an extremely sophisticated critique of Christianity, or theistic religion in general, in effect saying 'the Gothic period was one of a huge expansion of humanity's artistic and intellectual development, but the problem it left us with was...'
This is how I think it goes: the first three movements of the Gothic are a typical Brian symphony showing us a bewildering, highly juxtaposed series of impressions and moments from experience, the confusing experience of life, though by its idiom obviously in the modern era.
The fourth movement of the symphony deals with relatively unsophisticated spiritual exultation and religious expression and shifts the music definitely to E major from the D minor of the previous three movements. Brian is using a traditional Christian text and Beethoven in the Ninth Symphony is using a Enlightenment Deistic text for the same purposes. 
However, in the fifth and sixth movements Brian goes beyond Beethoven; the fifth movement is based solely on the text Judex crederis esse venturus, and the music has darkened, being much grimmer in tone. A superficial interpretation of this would see this as a result of thoughts of judgement. But I believe that Brian is saying here 'If people believe that a God is going to judge them there is a tendency for them to use this as an excuse to wage war (literal or figurative) on others in the name of that God and conformity.' And of course, immediately after the Gothic period this is what happened in Europe with the Reformation, the wars of religion, and also colonialism, the use of religion as a justification for European expansion around the globe. Not surprisingly the movement ends with a massive climax accompanied by the bird-scarer.
The sixth movement alternates these types of music, the exultative and the minatory. It tries to recapture the innocence of the fourth movement, but cannot. The movement turns again to fears of judgement (and no wonder, because the crimes of the wars of religion and colonialism are indeed many), Miserere nostri, Domine. The ending is a huge cacophony ending with the famous quiet supplication of the choir Non confunar in aeternam. But this is not Brian saying, 'the only thing left to us in the face of the chaos of life is trust in God', but saying 'The legacy that the Gothic period has left us is that we are unable to think outside official ideology and religion and find a way through ourselves; we are pathetically helpless, however much we try to pretend that the spiritual legacy it has left us (symbolised by E major) is the best we have.'
And then Brian went on to write another 31 symphonies portraying the (European) human condition without recourse to conventional religion.

[relm1]

I've been doing that most dangerous of things, thinking about the Gothic, and from simply marvelling at its size and accomplishment I have come to an Interpretation of it. This is what I think:

When I first got to know the Gothic Symphony I assumed that as Brian showed no obvious signs of an interest in conventional Christianity anywhere else in his work or correspondence then the choice of the text of the Te Deum for the Gothic Symphony was a case of finding a convenient text on which to hang the remarkable music of the final three movements, with a nod toward Christianity as the motivating force behind the Gothic period. (I accept the argument that the choice of a Psalm text in German for the Symphony No.4 was for the purposes of exposing the Nazi doctrine of Macht und Kraft, rather than for devotional reasons).
However, with repeated listening I now believe that Brian's Gothic Symphony is in fact an extremely sophisticated critique of Christianity, or theistic religion in general, in effect saying 'the Gothic period was one of a huge expansion of humanity's artistic and intellectual development, but the problem it left us with was...'
This is how I think it goes: the first three movements of the Gothic are a typical Brian symphony showing us a bewildering, highly juxtaposed series of impressions and moments from experience, the confusing experience of life, though by its idiom obviously in the modern era.
The fourth movement of the symphony deals with relatively unsophisticated spiritual exultation and religious expression and shifts the music definitely to E major from the D minor of the previous three movements. Brian is using a traditional Christian text and Beethoven in the Ninth Symphony is using a Enlightenment Deistic text for the same purposes. 
However, in the fifth and sixth movements Brian goes beyond Beethoven; the fifth movement is based solely on the text Judex crederis esse venturus, and the music has darkened, being much grimmer in tone. A superficial interpretation of this would see this as a result of thoughts of judgement. But I believe that Brian is saying here 'If people believe that a God is going to judge them there is a tendency for them to use this as an excuse to wage war (literal or figurative) on others in the name of that God and conformity.' And of course, immediately after the Gothic period this is what happened in Europe with the Reformation, the wars of religion, and also colonialism, the use of religion as a justification for European expansion around the globe. Not surprisingly the movement ends with a massive climax accompanied by the bird-scarer.
The sixth movement alternates these types of music, the exultative and the minatory. It tries to recapture the innocence of the fourth movement, but cannot. The movement turns again to fears of judgement (and no wonder, because the crimes of the wars of religion and colonialism are indeed many), Miserere nostri, Domine. The ending is a huge cacophony ending with the famous quiet supplication of the choir Non confunar in aeternam. But this is not Brian saying, 'the only thing left to us in the face of the chaos of life is trust in God', but saying 'The legacy that the Gothic period has left us is that we are unable to think outside official ideology and religion and find a way through ourselves; we are pathetically helpless, however much we try to pretend that the spiritual legacy it has left us (symbolised by E major) is the best we have.'
And then Brian went on to write another 31 symphonies portraying the (European) human condition without recourse to conventional religion.

You might enjoy this book.

https://www.amazon.com/Havergal-Brians-Gothic-Symphony-Studies/dp/0950518514

It includes two detailed study of the Gothic from his contemporaries plus Brian's own commentary on it.  The work is also somewhat autobiographical.  He was a chorister (tenor) in school and performed much music such as a te deum that had a great impact on him and that time in history (1880's, Victorian) where music he loved including Germanic music was treated as a serious subject, he could pour himself in to.  Quoting Brian: "I retained an impression of something on a vast scale, much of it due to my childish, impressionable mind, because, when many years afterwards I ran down on a visit to Lichfield with friends and went into the cathedral, I did not discover what it was that had overwhelmed me as a child.  The transept is magnificent and imposing, but not to the extent of my imaginative impression." 

The book is worth a read but think your description sounds reasonable but not particularly unexpected.  He describes his obsession with German history, literature, and music and how this combined with his own memories as a chorister in his youth in the middle of magnificent and imposing cathedrals (at least in his imagination).  It shows him to have a deep imagination, not just focused on the spiritual works but imagining being present when those works were created as he sang.    "If in those midnight hours I sometimes saw Frederick The Great, a shrunken figure at the end of a long life of fighting, John Sebastian Bach, Geothe, Berlioz, sitting in an armchair in the darkness around the fire, I attached no importance to the phenomenon." 

[Luke]

...and believe it or not, this is the house those visions happened in (photo taken by me):