First, for the impatient:
the ‘quick fix’. You may already feel
that your life would be incomplete without
the challenge of a recording of this
symphony on your shelf. If you don’t
you should be, and if you do then the
answer to your question is, ‘What are
you waiting for? Go and get it’. I can’t
imagine, with recording industry belts
getting ever tighter, that Havergal
Brian’s Gothic Symphony will
ever be featured on BBC Radio Three’s
‘Building a Library’. In terms of legal
recordings, this is Hobson’s choice,
but fortunately one with which Mr. Hobson
would be well pleased.
These days, ‘monumental’
is a word that’s so often associated
with ‘cock-up’ and ‘disaster’ that it’s
in danger of losing its ‘true’ meaning
altogether. The original Latin word
‘monumentum’ meant simply ‘remind’.
Somewhere along the line, ‘monuments’
became ‘lasting reminders’, and took
on increasing substance and solidity
because things that were made to last
had to be built not just like
tanks but better than tanks.
‘Size’ soon got hauled into the formula
- the more imposing the monument, the
more forcefully we mere mortals would
be reminded (some things never change!).
It’s a small step for
mankind to lift the architectural ‘monumental’
and splice it to less obdurate works
of art or science. Such works came to
earn the epithet if they were massive
and permanent. No doubt you’ll have
noticed, as I did, that the essential
quality of ‘reminding’ seems somehow
to have been swept under the carpet!
If we were to haul it back out from
its dusty dungeon and stick it back
in where it belongs, most works described
as ‘monumental’ wouldn’t be. Of Berlioz’s
choral ‘twins’, the Grande Messe
des Morts would remain ‘monumental’,
whilst the rather more imposing Te
Deum would revert to being merely
massive.
That brings us, rather
conveniently, to Havergal Brian’s First
Symphony. In spite of its incorporating
a setting of the Te Deum rather
than the Requiem, Brian’s Gothic
epitomises ‘monumental’, and it does
so for all the right reasons. True,
it does so for all the wrong reasons
as well - the Gothic Symphony
is in every respect a jaw-droppingly
massive edifice that tends to put even
Mahler’s Eighth into some sort
of perspective. The forces required
are so vast that they defeated, albeit
only just, the combined resources of
the two symphony orchestras on this
recording, necessitating a few bits
of nimble cheating on the part of the
recording engineers.
Alright, then, so what
are the ‘right reasons’? For those,
we must delve briefly into the background
- and listen to the music. Brian’s life
story is almost beyond belief. By his
mid-twenties, he had begun to make his
name known. So far, so good. Yet, performances
of his music by such as Wood and Beecham,
and even the admiration of no less than
Elgar, singularly failed to give him
that all-important leg-up to fame and
fortune. Performances of his music were
well-received but these successes never,
as you might reasonably have expected,
seemed to get him anywhere.
Following the Great
War, even the earnest interest of Richard
Strauss, by now a respected elder statesman
of the musical world, failed to ignite
in the musical establishment any semblance
of interest. In 1934, when Brian was
already in his late fifties, Tovey admonished
that establishment with the words, 'even
for the recognition of his smaller works
he is being made to wait . . . far longer
than is good for any country whose musical
reputation is worth praying for.’ I
leave you to guess the establishment’s
response!
Things got a little
better in the 1950s when Robert Simpson,
then a music producer for the BBC, took
up the septuagenarian Brian’s cause
in a practical way, putting at least
some of Brian’s prodigious symphonic
output where it belonged - into the
concert halls. Again, performances were
well - and sometimes even ecstatically
- received, but still Brian’s ‘career’
steadfastly refused to become airborne.
It remained that way right up to his
death. To all intents and purposes,
even now nothing has changed. I must
confess, I am completely flummoxed:
it isn’t as if Brian had committed the
cardinal sin of writing film music
and, as far as I am aware, he was never
unconscionably rude to even a single
soul.
The only reason that
I can fathom is that he was not only
a provincial, but also working class,
and at the crucial period of his life
as poor as a church mouse. I imagine
that, in the eyes of the largely middle-class
audiences of the day, performances of
his music must have seemed a bit like
hearing a lowly footman singing well
in church. It’d be ‘Oh, bravo!’ at the
time, but the next day they’d expect
him to be back in his proper place,
doing whatever it is that lowly footmen
do. Mud wasn’t actually slung, you understand,
but it stuck anyway. I might be wrong,
but can you come up with a better conjecture?
Fortunately, for the
audience that will, I am certain, one
day not be able to get enough of Brian’s
music, they must have bred ’em tough
in the old Staffordshire Potteries.
Brian certainly seemed to possess more
than his fair share of that legendary
working class ‘bloody-mindedness’. Where
many a lesser mortal might have taken
Bartók’s famous advice and ‘become
a lawyer’ (it might have been ‘carpenter’,
but who’s counting?), this - dare I
say? - monumental neglect served
only to further inflame his already
incandescent desire to compose. He must
really have loved his art, and I can
only hope that he had Beethoven’s ‘inner
ear’, because he never got to actually
experience the flesh of most of the
fruits of his labour.
Remarkably, considering
that of all his - and pretty well everyone
else’s - concert works it is the most
costly to put on, he did get to hear
the Gothic Symphony. Twice! The
story goes that, after the first professional
performance, Robert Simpson encouraged
him to stand in acknowledgement of the
rapturous applause of the audience that
crammed every available square inch
of the Royal Albert Hall. As he, understandably,
creaked to his feet the 90-year-old
composer said ruefully, ‘It doesn’t
half get you behind the knees, all this
sitting about.’ Thus it seems that he
bore his moment of greatest triumph
with the same phlegm as he endured that
lifetime of shameful neglect.
At the last count,
the Gothic Symphony has been
performed a mere four times: the first
one was essentially amateur, and thus
an achievement, a labour of love, of
truly staggering proportions. The last
one, effectively a private, piecemeal
performance, was this recording. It
shook me when I realised that, in preparing
to write this spiel, I’ve actually listened
to the recording more times than the
work recorded has ever been performed!
I know, there are plenty of works that
get a few performances, are recorded,
and subsequently sink into obscurity.
That’s how it should be. A piece gets
its chance, and if it turns out to be
- not to put too fine a point on it
- unmitigated dross, then the bin marked
‘obscurity’ is exactly where it belongs.
The key word, though, is ‘if’. Nobody
in their right minds would call this
music ‘dross’. Oh, it’s in a bin alright,
but a bin labelled simply ‘too expensive’.
Well, it’s high time somebody found
the cash - the Proms, perhaps?
The key factor behind
Brian’s inspiration seems to have been
the Great War. Of course, we all know
about the impact that this unprecedentedly
widespread and bloody conflict had on
artistic sensibilities - think of Elgar
and Ravel, to name but two. Brian’s
seems to have been a somewhat special
case: he was one of those, neither directly
involved in the fighting nor just supporting
the war effort from the comparative
safety of home. He enlisted alright,
but an injury to his hand put paid to
any aspirations of active service. He
ended up in that grisly ‘no man’s land’,
working in the hidden army responsible
for clearing up the mess - in his case,
recording the personal effects of the
legions of the fallen.
Depending on experience
and outlook, artistic response to the
Great War tended to divide into two
camps: those who mourned the passing
of the old order, and those who aspired
to a fresh start. I suspect that the
former came from the upper end of the
class ladder, the latter at the lower.
Certainly, Brian was initially filled
with optimism: his symphony was to be
a sort of manifesto. It was to present
the Gothic, when the Dark Ages were
banished by a wholesale re-awakening
of the creative urge, as a model for
the Twentieth Century’s ‘brave new world’.
Built like a great bridge, forged from
the steel of the intervening musical
developments, it would be a cathedral
of sound, a paean to Man’s indomitable
creativity. Brian wished to express
his hope for the future through nothing
less than a monument.
Somewhere along the
line, things went awry: the symphony
became the Monster to Brian’s Frankenstein.
Brian, who was not at all religious,
suggested that the Te Deum actually
forced itself upon him, ousting his
originally-intended setting of the end
of Goethe’s Faust. On the face
of it, this was no bad thing, as the
Latin text was far more apposite to
his ideas. However, it conspired with
something else - the residual horror
of his war-time experience that continually
haunted him - to divert him from his
intended path. The image is almost inescapable:
already struggling to control, or at
least contain, the colossal physical
forces burgeoning within his ‘Monster’,
‘Frankenstein’ apparently found himself
powerless to control of the metaphysics
of his creation.
It all seems to hinge
on the words non confundar in aeternum
which, as in this CD’s booklet, are
generally translated as ‘Let me never
be confounded’. However, from what I
can gather, it looks like this translation
has two problems. Firstly, ‘never’ is
a poor shot, because non qualifies
not aeternum but confundar.
‘Never’ is not the same as ‘forever’,
so at the very least the sentence means
‘Let me not be confounded in eternity’.
‘Confounded’ itself
is a bigger problem. By, in effect,
not actually translating the word, we
lay it open to accustomed modern interpretation.
Yet, when the words of the Te Deum
were first set down, about 1500 years
ago, I don’t think that the author(s)
were trying to say ‘Let me not be puzzled
or perplexed forever’ - after all, they
were writing about Judgement Day, not
the Times crossword. The original meaning
of the word is ‘defeat’ (yes, I know
that’s what the Times crossword does
to most of us!) or ‘condemn’. Put it
in the context of the preceding In
Te Domine speravi, and you get something
more like ‘In You, O Lord, I have trusted;
let me not be damned throughout eternity’
- a far more potent supplication than
the ‘usual’ translation suggests to
modern ears.
I suspect that this
deeper, archaic meaning is the particular
aspect of the Te Deum that conspired
with his wartime experiences. Having
been up to his eyeballs, day in and
day out, in the intimate effects of
the ‘confounded’, the resonance of experience
and words must have haunted him. I would
guess that this is what caused the creeping
corruption of his pop-eyed optimistic
‘Songs of Praise’. His expression of
hope in the future increasingly became
suffused with fear for the future. It
makes me wonder, was this apparent manipulation
of the creator by his creation down
to some sort of ‘divine intervention?
I can’t honestly say, but this I can
say: I’m sure that the Gothic
is all the better for it. Yet, somehow,
Brian went further! Within the extraordinary
sonic canvas of the Gothic, mingling
with allusions to the past, we can hear
what seem uncannily like predictions
of possible futures - and for this very
reason I am being very careful to avoid
saying anything on the lines of ‘these
bits are like Ligeti’, because in these
bits, and sundry others, Brian has beaten
them all to the punch! Moreover, from
our standpoint, the symphony’s final,
apocalyptic five minutes or so sound
like a terrible prophecy - a sombre
warning of just how fragile it all is.
This incredibly ambitious
scenario matches even Mahler at his
most vividly visionary. If the composer
was, as we are told, beset by psychic
demons and struggling to prevent the
whole work blowing up in his face, then
surely the Gothic must at best
be seriously flawed? On balance, I would
say ‘yes’ - but only inasmuch as Mahler’s
Eighth is ‘seriously flawed’!
I’m serious: to me, the degree of ‘perfection’
of any work is measured by the ratio
of ‘achievements’ to ‘failings’ (however
you care to define them). Part Two of
Mahler’s Eighth is criticised
for being episodic, yet those who make
such criticisms never seem to suggest
how Mahler might otherwise have
approached the setting of an episodic
text. The same goes for Brian’s First:
his Te Deum is as episodic as
Berlioz’s - or anybody else’s for that
matter - and, while we’re on the subject,
this is also true of the finale of Beethoven’s
Ninth, the putative structural
model for the Gothic.
High time, methinks,
to prove the pudding. Let’s get the
‘reissue’ issue out of the way first.
Introducing it in his ‘Review Corner’
on the Naxos website, David Denton declared,
"Those who have the original disc
can rest content that the sound quality
remains unaltered." Well, I have,
and it doesn’t. The tracks and timings
may well be the same, but when I compared
the openings of the two it was immediately
obvious that they weren’t the same.
The gruff, purposive tramping of the
basses had become softened, almost emasculated.
After some investigation, I had the
answer on a minidisc: a copy the original
‘as is’ and the reissue with the digital
gain cranked up by about 4.1 to 4.2
dB, and the latter had magically recovered
its masculinity!
I wondered if they
had hauled back the gain at the beginning
to create a bit of headroom for extending
the dynamic range later on. However,
this was scuppered by further checks,
which showed that the difference was
more or less the same throughout. So,
for some reason best known to Naxos,
the digital resolution has been reduced.
It’s curious, but nothing you need worry
about: listening, I found it hard to
tell the difference once I’d evened
the two up.
In either incarnation,
and considering the scale and complexity
of the music, the recording quality
is astonishing. There is a very slight
‘boxiness’ which may well have something
to do with the vast legions of performers
crammed like sardines into what is not
exactly the world’s largest concert/recording
venue - the choirs, apparently, had
to sing in the stalls, as there was
no room for them at the inn, or rather,
the back of the platform! Strange to
relate, though, this is compensated
by a decent feeling of spaciousness
in the acoustic, expansive but not too
reverberant. Some might think that this
music should have been recorded in a
gothic cathedral such as Brian suggests
in his music. This would be wonderful
for a live performance (I wish!), but
I don’t think it would do the music
any favours for repeated listening on
a recording.
Brian had particular
requirements for the layout of his forces.
In particular, he expected the four
choirs to be antiphonally distinct,
each with its own brass ensemble and
set of timpani. I have to say that this
is not overwhelmingly obvious on the
recording, although to be fair they
did try, but were hampered by limited
elbow room - and insufficient brass!
On the plus side, the multitudes of
timpani do come up a real treat in the
stereo image: if you enjoy the drumming
in Nielsen’s Fourth, you’re going
to be over the moon with this!
Another reviewer has
stated that ‘some vital detail goes
unpointed’, but fails to add a couple
of vital qualifiers. Firstly, which
vital detail that might be, amidst the
seething mass of vital details some
of which are bound to be swamped by
the others. Secondly, how can we tell
the difference? Considering the dearth
of comparisons, this comment surely
comes from a score-reader. Take it from
me, this recording isn’t short on detail,
pointed or otherwise, and it’ll be a
long time before you’ve digested all
the detail that you can hear
and start hungering for the detail that’s
unpointed. From a technical viewpoint,
it’s more important to note that the
sound is clearly articulated in the
many quiet passages, and remains impressively
composed through the massive outbursts.
Students of the art of ‘microphony’
will be well pleased.
Satisfying as it may
be during the purely orchestral music,
what really pins back your ears is the
sterling job the engineers did in capturing
the voices, whether these be in intricate
choral counterpoint, massive splendour,
or the lonely solo soprano in the Judex
Crederis movement. You’d have to
search far and wide to find a more impressive
choral recording
The lot of controlling
the forces that nearly skittled the
composer fell to Ondrej Lenárd
- quite literally, as he was something
of a last-minute substitute for Ole
Schmidt. Maybe Schmidt would have done
it better, we’ll never know, but Lenárd
was nothing short of inspired. Faced
with what must have seemed like an uncharted
continent, Lenárd had two options:
tread warily and play safe, or whip
out his machete and get stuck in. Right
from the outset, where the music ‘hits
the ground running’, you can almost
feel the machete cleaving the air, so
palpable is the sense of urgent purpose.
Yet, on arriving with almost startling
suddenness at the first ‘clearing’,
he cheerfully pulls up short and admires
the view, letting us savour the cloying
sweetness of Brian’s solo violin, languid
on a sugary, shimmering, twinkling bed
of rose-petals. All this - in the space
of a mere two minutes! It’s here also
that you already have the first inkling
of Brian’s symphonic approach - the
sentimental tune comes from a motif
screamed out by the violins during the
opening ructions. Once you’ve spotted
that, several other motives immediately
join the family, and before you know
where you are you’re hooked. Like many
before you, you’ll end up as a sort
of ‘Flying Dutchman’, condemned forever
to sail the seas of the Gothic
in search of its symphonic secrets -
confundar in aeternum, with knobs
on! Never mind, there are far worse
fates (I nearly said, ‘Worse things
happen at sea’!).
Lenárd has already
pointed up two vital details. Firstly,
he has punched home forcefully the point
that the familial themes share in both
rip-roaring turbulence and melting tenderness,
and so are going to play a big part
in the integration of Brian’s vast canvas.
Secondly, he has declared a boat-burning
commitment to the music. As the music
progresses, I more and more get the
feeling I did about Bernstein’s first
Mahler cycle: Lenárd believes
absolutely in the music, and he’s not
above taking a few risks in trying his
utmost to convince us of its value.
Passing detail, whilst by no means ignored,
definitely takes second place to putting
across the ‘big picture’.
The solo violin’s main
subject expands, blossoming in orchestral
spring - which is then disrupted by
violent incursions of the percussive
elements of the ‘introduction’. This
whole exposition is superbly wrought,
bringing interpretative ideas tumbling
into your mind: destructive versus creative,
the violent passions of creative rebirth,
the chemistry of good and evil in the
mind of Man, without which creativity
becomes a sterile pastime, et cetera!
At the other end of the movement, after
a brief recapitulation from the violin,
Lenárd whips up a frenzy of excitement
leading up to Brian’s first truly theatrical
gesture: the first appearance of the
organ. Augmented by massed brass, it
is just one short phrase, but vast,
vaulting and ‘hollow’; echoing across
the aeons it is the very sound of the
space within a gothic cathedral. If
the first movement represented ‘rebirth
pains’, Lenárd seems to say,
then this is the moment of rebirth.
Maybe there could have been more Earth-shaking
depth of organ-tone, but it is still
utterly awe-inspiring.
Malcolm MacDonald accurately
described the beginning of the second
movement: ‘[It is] like a cortège
approaching through the shadows of an
immense, vaulted cathedral nave’. I’d
add a small but significant qualification:
make that a ‘funeral cortège’.
Moreover, it’s one in which Brian seems
to be lamenting every great man whose
soul had left the body of his great
works incomplete - or, through its protracted
agony, he is reliving his nightmarish
wartime job, counting out the countless
lives of men through endless lists of
tiny treasures, each of which was destined
to shatter an entire family. From bewildered,
sorrowing strings to an enraged mammoth
screaming tight clusters of nerve-jangling,
discordant bile, Lenárd leaves
no punch pulled, dispensing grief wholesale.
The third and final
orchestral movement starts out like
a swirl of fresh air, admitted through
the great doors of the cathedral, and
dispelling the musty gloom. Lenárd
makes light of the breeze, for all the
world like a gossamer Bruckner scherzo!
In the dizzy crescendo, he draws forward
the woodwind’s theme, which not only
clarifies the feathery figurations of
the strings, but also presages the subsequent
cosily aspiring horn motive, glowing
like a candle in the darkness. This
has a big part to play in the movement,
in which a fit of the galloping gargoyles
is ultimately confounded by something
of a tidal surge of irresistible impetus,
redoubled by ‘breakthrough’ modulations.
It’s hard to avoid an image of the Dark
Ages being summarily dispelled by the
re-emergence of Man’s creative impulse.
The origin of the horn motive, the seeming
seed of enlightenment? First movement
- and you really can’t miss it!
I’ve no idea of the
politics of two symphony orchestras
sharing a platform, but there must have
been quite a kerfuffle sorting it all
out: who’s going to be the leader, for
a start! All the more credit to them
that none of that inevitable politicking
actually shows. They play as one, and
it sounds as if they are giving their
all to Brian’s music. The ensemble isn’t
flawless, of course, and nobody would
expect it to be in this pioneering first
recording, of a symphony of such mind-boggling
proportions that it has held a place
in the Guinness Book of Records
for as long as I can remember. What
is completely unimpeachable is the incandescent
fervour of the playing: you can feel
a real sense of occasion in these first
three movements, as if they believe
in every note of this unfamiliar music,
and have a missionary zeal for making
you share their belief.
That leaves the ‘small’
matter of the final three movements,
the setting of the Te Deum. I
must confess that this is a much tougher
nut to crack than the orchestral ‘introduction’,
and I find that I am still wrestling
with my musical nutcracker on this one.
This doesn’t mean that it’s difficult
to listen to - far from it, there is
a wealth of extremely beautiful, awe-inspiring,
and even savage music. That’s exactly
the problem, albeit a nice problem to
have. As far as the Te Deum is
concerned, I’m still at the drop-jawed,
gob-smacked stage - and I’m loving every
minute of it! It’s like walking into
a place like York Minster for the first
time. You just stand and gawp, your
mind trying to comprehend how anyone
could have imagined, designed and constructed
such a wonder with - well - just a few
bits of paper, some rope, and only the
kind of tools that you and I keep in
the shed!
What does penetrate
in no uncertain terms is the profound
originality of the music. I find myself
feeling humbled by the mind that conceived
this vast sonic cathedral, an edifice
that comes pretty close to rendering
Berlioz’s Te Deum the equivalent
of a village church (and I do not
intend any disparagement of the Berlioz,
which remains one of my favourite choral
works). At the start, Brian pulls off
another brilliant theatrical gesture,
a real stroke of genius. To begin with,
it all sounds so ordinary! Yet,
all of a sudden, there are voices everywhere,
a joyful clamour that would have had
Charles Ives himself nodding in approval
- and this is merely the first of an
astonishing parade of choral pyrotechnics.
Another theatrical stroke occurs just
over two-thirds of the way through:
a jaunty little march for a band of
nine chirpy clarinets. This tune becomes
the basis for a setting of the words
‘We worship Thy Name for ever’ which,
in spite of its vaulting climax steadfastly
retains its feeling of a happy band
of wanderers, singing as they tramp
along a country lane. Marvellous.
Having praised the
orchestra(s) to the skies, I’ve left
myself precious little headroom for
the choirs, both adults and children.
Yet, headroom is just what I must have,
as their singing gives transcendent
voice to that orchestral ‘missionary
zeal’. They are utterly fearless, and
they sing their socks off. As if their
grip on the bewildering density of the
‘joyful clamour’ isn’t enough, their
massed crescendo on a held chord at
the end of the Judex Crederis
has to be heard to be believed. What
is so amazing is that these choirs,
for whom Janáček’s Glagolitic
Mass is, I presume, infinitely more
familiar territory, seem to have taken
to Brian’s English choral style - for,
beneath all the startling originality,
that’s just what it is - like ducks
to water.
The soloists, poor
souls, seem to have drawn the short
straw. Brian’s Te Deum is definitely
a choral showcase, as he gives the soloists
precious little of the limelight: a
quartet early on, then really only the
bass (Dignare Domine) and the
soprano (Judex Crederis) get
a look in. Of these two solo parts,
Peter Mikuláš sings with warmth,
dignity, and not a little passion -
and, for a Slavic bass, with commendable
lack of excessive wobble, whilst Eva
Jenisová sings her solo like
an angel. Actually, given the thematic
style of the passage, it’d be more accurate
to say, ‘like a lark, ascending’. Heavenly.
The booklet - ah, the
booklet! The track listings are exactly
as for the original issue, right down
to the incorrect timing for CD2, track
16, which my machinery insists is 5'31
rather than the printed 7'45. The original
note, an invaluable discourse and synopsis
by Malcolm MacDonald, has been edited
down a little by Keith Anderson, but
happily it isn’t a ‘hatchet job’ for
economy at the printers’: the main loss
is the musical examples and references
thereto. Further joy can be had from
the fact that there is a full text and
translation - but be mindful of my ‘confounded’
caveat! Finally, there are background
notes on the orchestras and conductor,
three of the four soloists, and two
of the seven choirs. If that sounds
a mite remiss, take consolation in the
fact that the original issue covers
only the orchestras and conductor!
How do I sum up this
enterprise? Well, the original issue
was a triumphant success. Someone qualified
that with ‘unexpectedly’, though I suspect
that Marco Polo wouldn’t agree. If you’ve
read this far, you are very likely someone
who is enthralled by the symphony in
all its manifestations. If so, it shouldn’t
need me to tell you that, at Naxos’s
asking price of a mere ten pounds sterling,
the only possible reason you ever had
for holding back is well and truly down
the pan. If it had ever been given the
airings that it truly deserved, Brian’s
Gothic Symphony would now, at
a conservative estimate, be universally
acknowledged as one of the seminal
works of the Twentieth Century.
I cannot convince myself
that its continuing neglect is simply
for financial reasons, because even
now there are plenty of organisations
who could afford to at least ‘turn it
over’ once every few years - Marco Polo
are not the world’s richest recording
company, but they managed to record
it. Yet this recording enshrines the
only ‘performance’ of this work ever
undertaken outside Brian’s native land,
and that is a shocking disgrace. In
a world where, we are told, ‘size does
matter’, this symphony should be far
more often heard as intended - in the
flesh. That’s not just because it’s
BIG, as big as any blockbuster movie
- and a damned sight better bolted together
than most of those - but because it
is a profound and beautiful expression
of Man’s loftiest thoughts and greatest
fears. Now, what are you waiting
for?
Paul Serotsky
see also review
by Rob
Barnett and John France
Very full details
links from the Brian Website
http://www.musicweb-international.com/brian/sym1.htm
Havergal
BRIAN
(1876-1972) CD
1 [63:14] The Tinker’s Wedding -
Comedy Overture (1947-48) [7:18] Symphony
No. 31 (1967-68) [13:23] Symphony No.
7 in C (1948) [42:16] CD2* [52:28] Symphony
No. 8 in B flat minor (1949) [24:40]
Symphony No. 9 in A minor (1951) [27:34]
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra
(leader: Malcolm Stewart) 
Conductors: Sir Charles Mackerras and
Sir Charles Groves* Recorded in the
Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool, 3-4 May
1987 and No.1 Studio*, Abbey Road, London,
25-26 July 1977 CD1 digital recording;
CD2 digitally remastered
EMI CLASSICS (BRITISH COMPOSERS SERIES)
7243 5 75782 2 6 [115:42] reviewd
by Rob Barnett
HAVERGAL
BRIAN
(1876-1972) The Complete
Piano Music
Raymond Clarke (piano) Esther
King (mezzo) Tessa Spong (speaker) Recorded
at Potton Hall, Dunwich 19-20 June 1997
Minerva Athene ATH CD12 recording
sponsored by the Havergal Brian Society
76:34 reviewed by Rob Barnett
The
Havergal Brian Society Website on MusicWeb
