Prom 4: Sunday 17th July 2011 at 7.00 p.m. (Brian 'The Gothic')

[3rd Viennese School]

Brian was 78 when he started to write the last 20 or so symphonies. 78! I'm not joking kids.

3VS

[morebritishmusicplease]

Duplicate message posted in error.

[morebritishmusicplease]

Gothic experience

I'm so pleased to have found this Radio 3 forum, after the BBC so rudely and unilaterally closed down their messageboards (shows how interested they are in listeners' opinions!)
Re the various reactions to the Gothic on Sunday, I was there and was completely bowled over; it's the second time I've heard it live, although I know it well from the CD's, and far and away the best performance, I would say. To those who find the work a puzzle, or dismiss it as 'disjointed', etc, I would say, for a start, read Malcolm MacDonald's excellent article, 'Brian as Faust' - this just begins to suggest what it was Brian was trying to do; much more than just writing 'the biggest symphony'. If the piece has 'flaws', then as far as I'm concerned it's in the same way that the universe has 'flaws'. It is undoubtedly a work of staggering originality and genius, and one of the most compelling musical experiences around.

[Bryn]

So pleased, you posted it twice, indeed. Where in the RAH were you on Sunday. I was standing in the bell of the clarinet. For the previous two RAH performances I was up in the Gallery. Agreed, it knocked spots of both Boult's and Schmidt's performances, much as I enjoyed both. As to the Lenard, well, the indexing of the movements is useful for study purposes.

[morebritishmusicplease]

I was in the gallery, almost exactly where I was the last time, in 1966! The trouble is, I can't remember much about that first hearing, but certainly the performance on Sunday could hardly have been better for accuracy; the only quibble I might have had was the placing of the brass bands - surely they could have been spaced out more, each with thesub-chorus it accompanied? Maybe it was the only place they could go where they could see the conductor directly and stay in time, given that the main choir seats were completely filled? It must all have been a bit alarming for the children's choirs they were next to! lol
(The double posting was an accident, but I can't see how to remove one of them).

[Bryn]

(The double posting was an accident, but I can't see how to remove one of them).

If you ask the team captain (Eine Alpensinfonie) nicely, he might remove it for you, or you could even ask our own Dear Leader, French Frank.

If you would like to remind yourself of the 1966 performance, the Third Programme Stereo FM broadcast can be heard on a Testament double CD album release but recently:



Their claim that it was recorded live at the Royal Albert Hall is misleading. The live broadcast was from there, but the recording is clearly from someone's receiver (the audio is restricted to around 15kHz except for a tell-tale hump at 19kHz, the result of the stereo multiplex carrier).

[johnb]

If you ask the team captain (Eine Alpensinfonie) nicely, he might remove it for you, or you could even ask our own Dear Leader, French Frank.

Even easier, morebritishmusicplease, select the post you want to delete, click on "Edit" then click on "Delete"!

Bryn, thanks for the heads up about the Boult 1966 recording.

[LHC]

Their claim that it was recorded live at the Royal Albert Hall is misleading. The live broadcast was from there, but the recording is clearly from someone's receiver (the audio is restricted to around 15kHz except for a tell-tale hump at 19kHz, the result of the stereo multiplex carrier).

Presumably you would have preferred a more scrupulously accurate designation of:

"Performed live at the Royal Albert Hall, broadcast by BBC Radio 3 and recorded at No. 16 Railway Cuttings, East Cheam, October 1966"

[3rd Viennese School]

I like the fact that I've never heard of any of the singers in that first ever performance.
Shirley Minty???

3VS

[morebritishmusicplease]

'If you would like to remind yourself of the 1966 performance, the Third Programme Stereo FM broadcast can be heard on a Testament double CD album release but recently:'

Yes - I knew that recording had come out and I really must listen to it to see what it was all like. I know I was vastly impressed at the time, but then I was only 13! I'm sure dear old Sir Adrian presided impertubably as ever over it all but I can't quite imagine how he handled keeping those vast forces together, and I wonder very much about intonation in the long unaccompanied choral passages, not to mention the difficulty of the choral writing in itself.

[Lion-of-Vienna]

Just a quick plug for the Havergal Brian Society. One of the benefits of membership is the recordings library. Members can borrow CDs from this for a small fee. The Boult Gothic is there together with virtually all of the symphonies and three of the operas in recordings from the last 50 years or more. Commercial Brian CDs are also available at reduced price. Details here:

http://www.havergalbrian.org/sitemain.htm

[Serial_Apologist]

I listened many, many times to the mono reel-to-reel of the broadcast Boult performance my father made, until it disintegrated, and can assure that the intonation was spot on to this set of perfect-pitch ears in the choral section - unlike last Saturday, when to my astonishment the solo soprano suddenly emerged a full tone above the massed chors' unison pitch. I thought she'd made a mistake, until the trumpets' subsequent entry, which had to be on that same pitch for that brass fanfare.

It would be helpful if some kind person could reproduce a clip from that Boult performance...

S-A

[bluestateprommer]

one more review / random comments

Just to get at least one more print voice into the fray, here's Barry Millington's review from The Evening Standard:

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/music/review-23970744-the-gothic-symphony-royal-albert-hall---review.do

I was in the Gallery for Prom 4, just about dead center back. I could see the whole spectacle of all the chorus, the 4 brass and timpani bands, and all the 'artillery' of the percussion section. The one thing I was deprived of visually was seeing, as opposed to just hearing, Susan Gritton from her perch in Gallery left (house left, stage right) near the lift for her soprano solo. For that alone, she takes solo vocal honors.

Now that I've actually heard this work live, as opposed to just the Marco Polo recording, I'm now very firmly in the 'mixed' camp as to HB 1's musical merits. It opens and finishes magnificently, and the two particular moments when HB lets everything and the kitchen sink fly for sheer spectacle and power are unlike anything I've ever heard. The Rite of Spring has nothing on those moments. Various patches worked very well for me, others just kind seemed not to lead to anything. The choruses were stretched, to my ears, beyond breaking point, and at more than one moment it was nearly impossible to follow the text. HB doesn't make it easy for anyone, to be sure.

However, everyone on that stage that night deserves a medal, or at least a free beer for the adults and ice cream for the kids, for pulling this off. If any one person on the RAH stage was the 'star' of the show, my vote would have to go to Martyn Brabbins simply for holding the whole thing together as well as he did. His beat and overall leadership were perhaps more 'relaxed' than I might have expected, in that his gestures were fairly smooth and flowing and not abrupt. However, from talking with some chorus members after the performance (who weren't shy about saying how difficult the choral writing was), they had nothing but praise for Brabbins, for how professionally and coolly he directed the rehearsals, echoing the comments of the BBC NOW musicians in the pre-concert talk (and thanks to the horn player in the talk for putting in a good word for the BBC Concert Orchestra, when Sarah Walker inadvertenly left their name out of the intro, putting the spotlight on the BBC NOW).

Having crossed the pond for this, I'm glad I heard it live. However, I can also say, at the risk of tastelessness (and practical financial realities aside), that the next performance of HB 1 can possibly wait until 2026. (No prizes for guessing the reason why.) I can say with sadly full confidence that HB 1 will never be done in the USA, certainly not in my lifetime, so I can cross this off the '1000 Pieces of Classical Music You Have to Hear Live Before You Die' list. Cheers also to the BBC for being willing to take such a huge loss in putting this one, with what must have been 1400 seats taken off sale and 250 Arena places depleted for the occasion.

PS: What will happen if the Proms does Delius' A Mass of Life next year?

[Bryn]

It would be helpful if some kind person could reproduce a clip from that Boult performance...

S-A

Will this do?

[Lion-of-Vienna]

The choruses were stretched, to my ears, beyond breaking point, and at more than one moment it was nearly impossible to follow the text. HB doesn't make it easy for anyone, to be sure.

An interesting point. Before the performance I read Harold Truscott's article on "The Music of the Symphony" in the HBS society's publication "Havergal Brian's Gothic Symphony - Two Studies". On page 28 Truscott makes the point that he believed that Brian had a destructive side to his nature. Being a non-believer the Te Deum would have meant little to him, a hymn of praise for a being whom he did not believe existed. So Brian, perhaps unconsciously, composed his music in such a way as to negate the words by overlapping them and stretching out syllables so that the words are inaudible. I am not sure that I personally fully subscribe to this idea but Brian was by this time a very experienced composer of choral music who must surely have known how to make the words audible had he so desired. To quote Truscott, "none of this is ineptitude; it is planned, it is positively written into the fabric of the music".