Havergal Brian.

[Brian]

That's a shame. I would have loved to have heard Hickox, Handley, or Thomson conduct this work.

The reason Brabbins works so well - and the reason we were a bit skeptical about Rattle when someone mentioned him at the pub - is that with a work this sprawling, ambitious, and outrageously idiosyncratic, it's very very good indeed to have a conductor who is none of those things at all: capable of great excitement, to be sure, but a conductor who emphasizes clarity and absolutely negates personal idiosyncrasy. Martyn Brabbins is, as the Guardian called him, an "anti-maestro," and his understated but fully in-command leadership had us all inspired. So I don't necessarily think it's "Englishness" which one would look for in conducting this work, but an emphasis on clarity and a willingness to let Havergal Brian's be the only ego onstage. 

Incidentally, this all may be why the first and only commercial recording is by the consummately professional but not exactly unforgettable Ondrej Lenard. It also may be why some of the best recordings of the huge works of Bruckner, Mahler, and Messiaen are provided by conductors like Wand, Bertini, and Wit (and, only slightly deviating from the pattern, Boulez).

You can listen to the performance on 5against4's blog if you can't possibly wait

[vandermolen]

The grand return of Dundonnell to this forum is itself a cause for celebration - I have missed your contributions very much.

Attending the concert last night has also made me reconsider what I think of Havergal Brian and his Gothic Symphony.  I have listened to the Naxos recording twice since the concert - with growing appreciation. I see the apparent non-sequiturs in Brian's music to be an asset rather than a liability.  I think that the unpredictability of the Gothic and other scores is part of its appeal (there is a comparison with Langgaard here I think).  In this sense Brian reminds me of the primitive painter Rousseau ('Le Douanier'), who, like Brian, was largely self-taught and, lacking academic training fell back on what came to be valued most in early 20th century painting - instinct.  I've heard it argued that if Rousseau had had an academic training it would have crushed his extraordinary and vivid imagination, which brings his paintings alive - so, we would probably not have heard of him. Likewise Brian, who clearly did have technical know-how, is carried forward by his extraordinary vision to produce in the Gothic a work of startling originality (by the way, unlike many critics, I  hear nothing of Vaughan Williams in the symphony). The Brabbins performance (and I agree that it is the best of the four I have heard either live or on CD) brought me to a much greater appreciation of Part Two - the massive setting of the Te Deum. I'm not sure if I'm the only one here who also went to the Ole Schmidt performance (I still have the programme somewhere) but I remember switching off in Part Two - I was much younger and less interested in choral music than I am now and the performance was not nearly as good as last night's concert. In a perverse way I rather enjoyed having to stand through it (having spent 5 hours in the queue) - somehow for me it added to the sense of occasion (the fact that I've hardly been able to walk today is neither here nor there!) Somehow the whole thing became a kind of test of endurance, which seemed oddly appropriate. My brother (a Bruckner fanatic) who was with me said that for him the Gothic represented the struggle/contrast between divine perfection and human imperfection - an interesting thought.

[Dundonnell]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmSL0lsHQZg

This has appeared on YouTube from someone in the audience. It is tantalizingly brief but enough to make one so sad that it was not indeed televised!!!

[Dundonnell]

Oh....and Thank You so much for your kind comment, Jeffrey! Yours is a superbly perceptive posting!

[vandermolen]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmSL0lsHQZg

This has appeared on YouTube from someone in the audience. It is tantalizingly brief but enough to make one so sad that it was not indeed televised!!!

Thank you Colin for posting this - and for your nice comment above.  Yes, of course they should have televised the concert - it was a visual spectacle as well as an aural one - a wasted opportunity.

[Lethevich]

Must save the precious camera crews for broadcasting more Beethoven symphonies by second-tier orchestras

[vandermolen]

Must save the precious camera crews for broadcasting more Beethoven symphonies by second-tier orchestras

Absolutely!

[karlhenning]

They're expanding the coverage to third-tier outfits, too!

[vandermolen]

OT

I've just listened right through Gliere's mammoth Ilya Muromets Symphony (RPO, Faberman) - seeing the Brian has obviously put me in the mood for gargantuan epic symphonies! I have been very fortunate to see the Gliere live in London too a few years ago (the first performance of the complete score in England since c 1913 I think).

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

The things I hoped for most were that this performance 1) would be great , 2) would deepen the understanding of those that (think they) know the piece, 3) make some sceptics reconsider and 4) gain Brian new friends. All four things have happened. I am very glad! [I liked your earlier post a lot, Jeffrey! It is wonderful to see you really getting through to the work!]

[Brian]

Fittingly for such a massive symphony, I've written two blog essays about seeing the 'Gothic'!

Seeing the 'Gothic' on the experience of being there as a newcomer to the music
On Ambition in Art, a meditation on when ambition works as an artistic trait and when it may not

Bear in mind, of course, that my blog is casually written for friends so there won't be score analysis or comparisons to Ole Schmidt or anything like that.  Be gentle

[Albion]

A view from the stalls:

Well, what an event! The sense of anticipation was palpable in the three-quarters of an hour from when the doors opened to the moment that Martyn Brabbins signalled that we were all (both at home and in the Hall itself) about to embark on an epic journey through one of the most extraordinary musical creations of the twentieth century. As the innumerable choristers filed in, joined by the vast orchestral forces (marshalled both on the specially-extended stage and off-stage to left and right) the question was - would the actual experience of hearing the music match up to all this pent-up excitement.

Personally, the answer was undoubtedly and triumphantly "Yes"! I think it is fair to say that this was the best performance that the Gothic has ever had - certainly the sheer orchestral virtuosity was breath-taking. The contribution of the 800 choral singers came unnaturally close to matching the super-human (or inhuman) demands made by Brian in his "music of the imagination": true, there were occasional pitch-issues (which are inevitable in a live performance and can probably only be overcome in a recording studio, with the opportunity for cut-and-paste re-pitching), but this all added to a sense of striving against impossible odds which is surely a fundamental part of the composer's vision. The four vocal soloists were excellent too and their dramatic entrance, timed to perfection as the massed choirs stood as one on the dramatic F# chord towards the end of the Scherzo, was truly electrifying.

The hero of the hour was Martyn Brabbins - he did not just beat like a windmill and "hope for the best" but moulded a beautifully shaped performance which was clearly a real interpretation of the work as a whole rather than the sum of it's not inconsiderable constituent parts.

The universally-acknowledged problems with the acoustics in the Royal Albert Hall served to cloud many orchestral subtleties, but luckily the close miking for radio broadcast has revealed a fabulous wealth of detail. The technology that we have around us now means that this performance will have been captured by countless music-lovers across the world - it is certainly the recording of Brian's stupendous creation that I will be returning to most often.

It was an incredible event which I feel immensely privileged to have been able to witness. Unfortunately I wasn't able to linger after the concert (hence the rather unceremonious "accosting" of Johan - the only face I recognised courtesy of the picture posted earlier in this thread) but it was a real bonus to know that so many knowledgeable and appreciative members from various forums were present to enjoy the same once-in-a-generation experience.

[Dundonnell]

Absolutely agree with what Albion has posted!

The supreme moment for me-and I know others have commented about this too- was the end of the third movement.

I cannot resist quoting (again!) Malcolm MacDonald's description of that amazing cadence-

"From C major to D minor by way of F sharp, all in three triads: it is the sensational juxtaposition of C and F sharp that is so exhilarating. Brian has discovered his full powers. He can stride from one end of the tonal universe to the other in a split second: he can make a single cadence bear the dramatic weight of an entire movement. This is the victory of imagination over form."

This superbly written description so perfectly captures that sublime moment. I was sitting (in the front row of the stalls-lucky me!) listening in recognition and expectation and as that thunderous music poured forth across the RAH, and as the smile, nay, beam, spread yet wider across my face the soloists slowly walked down the steps onto the stage and  the massed choirs-all 800 singers-were suddenly and dramatically bathed in light and rose to their feet in unison. It really was breathtaking! It know that this sounds unbelievably hyperbolic but-to me-heaven itself appeared to be opening up.

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

From the Facebook page of the BBC Proms 2011... Click to enlarge.

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Fittingly for such a massive symphony, I've written two blog essays about seeing the 'Gothic'!

Seeing the 'Gothic' on the experience of being there as a newcomer to the music
On Ambition in Art, a meditation on when ambition works as an artistic trait and when it may not

Bear in mind, of course, that my blog is casually written for friends so there won't be score analysis or comparisons to Ole Schmidt or anything like that.  Be gentle

Reading matter for tomorrow. Although it is already tomorrow. I am late again... The 'Gothic' keeps me awake!

[Guido]

I'm surprised that your view of the Gothic and of Brian has changed so much Johan - I thought you were already a total devotee!

[relm1]

Hi everyone,

I'm new here.  Though I was unable to attend the performance in London, I did manage to make it to Brisbane for their Gothic late last year.  I am curious from those who attended the BBC Proms performance - how did the thunder machine sound?  I noticed in previous performances it was a thunder sheet but based on the excellent pictures posted above, this orange devise looks quite interesting.  Also, how were those low descending bass trombone pedal notes in the Royal Albert Hall (Movement III: Vivace in rehearsal 75)?  Looking at the score, it is unison fortissimo on three trombones plus two tubas and should have sounded like a roar but since I only had the radio broadcast to listen, I wasn't sure if it was a micing issue but otherwise had the sense of tremendous dread that's written in the score?  It really should have been deafening.  It seems the harmony is very interesting - xylophone playing c#min7 (C#, E, G#, B) but the low notes are A in the basses, and b flat in the low brass.  Timpani 1 keeps repeating b flat but harp is playing b natural.  It's a very unique passage.

Cheers,
Karim

[Luke]

Brian, that is a fabulous piece of writing. Two fabulous pieces. You have serious talent for the apposite image, and seriously good perceptive hearing, eloquently expressed with tangible passion and a happy dose of humour. I love it. Actually I'm a little jealous! But at least I got a tangential mention (and not as the 'flamboyantly gay man shouting 'Marvellous,'' before anyone asks...). Big kudos. 

[Philip Legge]

Karim,

I remember you from the Brisbane Gothic! Glad to see you here, and hope you've enjoyed reading parts of this thread; obviously there has been a lot of interest over the past year with two performances of the mighty Symphony No. 1.

The passage from figure 75 through to 76 in Part One is quite astonishing. At the cited figure (75), the xylophone, 2 piccolos and 2 flutes have sextuplet semiquaver roulades emphasising the four note pitches, C#, E, G#, and B. The family of oboes are reinforcing three of those notes (omitting the G#) at the lowest pitches available on their instruments, with the respective clarinets in unison, as accented semibreves. Both harps are strumming a similar C#, B, C#, G#, C# chord every quaver. The cellists divided in four also spell out low C#, E, G#, C#, the upper note with an appoggiatura from an upper D# on each quaver. The low C# is held down as a sustained pedal note in the organ: thus a sizeable proportion of the orchestra is asserting a C# minor + 7th chord.

Against this, the timpanists are accenting a triad of B flat, D and F every quaver. The double basses are playing a low A every quaver (each with an appoggiatura from the B above). Violins and violas have a high-pitched, six-part division of clustered harmonics which include the G# in three octaves and the E, but also add a D# and an F# to the mixture as well. This essentially spells out 10 of the possible 12 enharmonic pitches of the octave, leaving out only C and G, and as Malcolm MacDonald has astutely pointed out in his three-volume survey of the symphonies, this locks the music into "an uncanny rictus: it is racing ahead, flat out, and yet the effect is absolutely static". Harmonic motion over this ostinato can only be asserted by brute force, and so after two bars from figure 75, the combined weight of the tenor trombone pedals and bass tubas re-introduce the chromatic figure inspired by Berlioz's Requiem, entering on their low B flat and successively proceeding "downwards by semitones to A, to G#, and finally to G natural" with "huge deliberation". All notes are now in play except for C, and again to quote Malcolm, "G becomes a dominant, and the music plunges, with both tonal and a kind of 'serial' logic, into C minor, and the climax that Brian has so brilliantly prepared". Thus the 10 bars that move from figure 75 to figure 76 and the new military "Meno Allegro. Grandioso" that ensues to bring this wonderful movement to its crux.

The late Harold Truscott has written illuminatingly on the longer Più Allegro passage of which this short 10-bar analysis is the culmination of (it actually commences 30 bars before at figure 72): and rather improbably in his long essay (published in 1978 as part of Havergal Brian's Gothic Symphony: Two Studies by the Havergal Brian Society) relates it to the science of black holes. His point is essentially that once the music (and the attentive listener) has gone through this experience, there is no turning back; the course of the symphony has been irrevocably changed: "In some ways I hear it as perhaps the crucial passage in the entire symphony, for after it nothing is ever the same as it was. ... Once through, nothing is the same and we cannot get back. I have tried the experiment of listening to a point just beyond this passage, then stopping the tape, rewinding, and hearing the beginning again, or going back to some other previous point, and the result sounds strange and nothing like what I have just heard. I know of no word to describe the effect of this passage, in its context; "weird", "fantastic", "frightening", "disturbing" – none of these is adequate, although it contains them all. But its effect is something unique, far beyond any of these separately, and with other elements to which I could not put a name."

I've long found myself in profound agreement with Truscott's analysis: something deep lurks in the third movement waiting to be unleashed, and it generates a psychological point of no return that the music drives headlong through, motivating all that follows. I can see from the first-hand reports of those who were physically there in the hall that this effect was real in a way that it probably was not for those listening over the radio with rather less personal commitment to "being" there in spirit: the event was being live-blogged from the radio stream, and I was also following Twitter during the performance. I was thus completely unsurprised to see one of the establishment critics had switched his faculties firmly to the "off" setting, barely half an hour into proceedings, and who cross-posted some complete rubbish to both the hashtags "gothicsymphony" and "yawn". (* See postscript.)

As an ardent Berliozian, but perhaps more crucially as a non-Briton, it strikes me that the lack of recognition of Brian as a major composer by those in his native country parallels quite similarly the long-held mistrust for Berlioz in France, so that of late more of his admirers were or are non-French than French. Whether you like what Brian did or not (and as a result of the Proms performance I assert there would be plenty of new-found people in the former camp, as opposed to the critics in the latter), that is not any reason to belittle his achievements by such cursory dismissals as "not even third-rate" which in some cases seem not to have been based on anything so substantial as a single listening of the work.

Cheers, Philip

* Edited to add: I was wrong, the hashtags were "bbcproms" and "yawn". Here it is: Finally those moaning boring geeks that would write to me at Radio 3 every week get their wet dream Prom. #yawn #bbcproms

[5against4]

I've found it very interesting to see the response to my article on 5:4 - in terms of number of visitors as much as anything else. While the blog gets a high number of visitors each week anyway, it has simply gone through the roof since writing about the Gothic. There are several other individual occasions when this has happened, but the only time it's been with connection to a specific composer was when i wrote last year with a review/recording of Cardew's Bun No. 1. So it seems readers in the blogosphere are extremely interested to hear neglected works by equally neglected English composers!