HAVERGAL BRIAN: Symphony No. 1 in D minor “The Gothic” – Honor Sheppard/Shirley Minty/Ronald Dowd/Roger Stalman/ 6 Choirs/ BBC Symphony Orchestra/ Sir Adrian Boult – Testament SBT2 1454 (2 CDs), 52:09, 55:58 [Distr. by Harmonia mundi] *****:
Brian, sometimes known as the British would-be Mahler, was a fascinating composer whose life would make a terrific movie. He lived until 1972 and wrote a total of 32 symphonies in the fashion (but not the sound) of Haydn and Mozart, writing eight of them after he was 90 years old. He originally had a £500 a year stipend from a businessman to compose but frittered it away. He never was a real success as a composer or at anything else, although he was friends with Bantock and had a connection with Richard Strauss. His symphonies are appreciated by only a small couturie of fans around the world.
Brian didn’t even get any of his symphonies performed professionally until the early 1950s when Robert Simpson – a composer and music producer at the BBC – took an interest in his work and convinced Sir Adrian Boult to perform some of the symphonies. The Gothic Symphony is Brian’s largest surviving work, and this recording was of a BBC broadcast from Royal Albert Hall in 1966, with a vast aggregation of performers that vies with Mahler’s Eighth and filled a goodly portion of the hall. I have several of the Boult-conducted Brian symphonies on open reel tape, including this one, via one of his fans who once aired them on the Pacifica Radio Network. The sonics are greatly improved on the Testament reissue CDs, although with the immense number of performers there would be clear advantages in having even more clarity and detail than this recording offers, not to mention surround sound.
Brian’s music brings together a wide variety of influences, not just Mahler. It owes somewhat to Wagner, Bach, Bruckner, Elgar, Richard Strauss and Bax. All his music is basically tonal, but it can build to a tremendous cacaphony, as well as having moments of hauntingly beautiful pastoral qualities. He conjures up some very unusual timbres from the orchestra that sound like no one else. The colossal Gothic Symphony – lasting an hour and a half – has a classical four-movement structure, and is full of contrapuntal writing that owes a great deal to Bach. It’s finale might remind the listener in its forward thrust and ease of movement to the finale of Mozart’s Symphony No. 41. As Brian progressed thru creating his 32 symphonies, they become consistently shorter and more compact, often sounding more classical, in the Haydn mold. The first was his really large-scale symphonic statement. The last seven minutes on the second CD of this set is a 1966 BBC interview with Brian which is most interesting. When asked what his impression of the meaning of life is, he says “I’ve been trying to figure that out for 70 years.”
– John Sunier
