Havergal Brian
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William "Havergal" Brian (29 January 1876 – 28 November 1972), was a British classical composer.
Brian acquired a legendary status at the time of his rediscovery in the 1950s and 1960s for the 32 symphonies he had managed to write, an unusually large number for any composer since Haydn or Mozart, and of which eight were completed after the age of 90.
He is also notable for his creative persistence in the face of almost total neglect during the greater part of his long life. Even now, none of his works can be said to be performed with any frequency, but few composers who have fallen into neglect after an early period of success have continued to produce so many serious and ambitious works so long after any chance of performance would seem to have been gone for good.
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[edit] Biography
William Brian (he adopted the name "Havergal" from a local family of hymn-writers) was born in Dresden, a district of Stoke-on-Trent, and was one of a very small number of composers to originate from the English working class. After attending an elementary school he had difficulty finding any congenial work, and taught himself the rudiments of music. For a time he was organist of Odd Rode Church just across the border in Cheshire. In 1895, he heard a choir rehearsing Elgar's King Olaf, attended the first performance and became a fervent enthusiast of the new music being produced by Richard Strauss and the British composers of the day. Through attending music festivals he made the lifelong friendship of his near-contemporary composer Granville Bantock (1868–1946).
In 1907 his first English Suite attracted the attention of Henry Wood who performed it at the London Proms. It was an overnight success and Brian obtained a publisher and performances for his next few orchestral works. Why he never succeeded in maintaining his success is a matter for debate, but it was probably due to his shyness with strangers and lack of confidence on public occasions. Whatever it was, the offers of performance soon dried up.
Brian married, in 1898, Isabel Priestley, by whom he had five children, and he was continually hard up. At this point (1907) a development unusual in British 20th century musical history transformed Brian's life; whether for better or for worse has never been decided. He was offered a yearly income of £500 (then a respectable lower-middle-class salary) by a local wealthy businessman, Herbert Minton Robinson, to enable him to devote all his time to composition. It seems Robinson expected Brian soon to become successful and financially independent on the strength of his compositions. This never happened. For a while Brian worked on a number of ambitious large-scale choral and orchestral works, but felt no urgency to finish them, and began to indulge in hitherto-undreamt-of pleasures, such as expensive foods and a trip to Italy.
Arguments over the money and an affair with a young servant, Hilda Mary Hayward, led to the collapse of his first marriage in 1913. Brian fled to London and although Robinson deeply disapproved of the incident he continued to provide Brian with money until his own death, though most of the allowance went to Brian's estranged wife. The affair with Hilda turned into a lifelong relationship: Brian and she began living together as man and wife, and after Isabel's death in 1933 they were married. Hilda had already borne him another five children. In London, Brian began composing copiously, to alleviate the fact of living in conditions of the most basic poverty. On the outbreak of World War I he volunteered for the Honourable Artillery Company but saw no service before he was invalided out with a hand injury. He subsequently worked at the Audit Office of the Canadian Forces Contingent until December 1915. The family then moved to Birmingham until May 1919 and then spent several years in various locations in Sussex. Brian eventually obtained work of a musical kind, copying and arranging, and writing for the journal The British Bandsman. In 1927, he became assistant editor of the journal Musical Opinion and moved back to London.
Nothing was a success for Brian; even his war service was short and farcical, and gave him the material for his first opera The Tigers. In the 1920s he at last turned to symphonies, though he had written more than ten before one of them was first performed in the early 1950s. This was due to his discovery by Robert Simpson, himself a significant composer and BBC Music Producer, who asked Sir Adrian Boult to programme the Eighth Symphony in 1954. From then on Brian composed another twenty-two symphonies, many of the later ones short, single or two-movement works, and several other pieces.
[edit] Music
In 1961, Brian's largest surviving work, the Gothic Symphony, which had been written between 1919 and 1927, was first performed at Central Hall, Westminster, in a partly amateur performance conducted by Bryan Fairfax, and in 1966 the first fully-professional performance was given at the Royal Albert Hall conducted by Boult, both occasions largely the result of Simpson's lobbying. The latter performance was broadcast live and many people heard their first music of Brian that evening. This encouraged considerable interest, and by his death six years later several of his works had been performed and the first commercial recordings had begun to appear. For a few years after Brian's death, while Simpson still had influence at the BBC, there was a revival of interest with a number of recordings and performances; two biographies and a three-volume study of his symphonies appeared. The reputation of his music has always been restricted to enthusiasts and has never achieved great popularity.
In 1979, Cameo Classics embarked on a project to record all of Brian's orchestral music in collaboration with the Havergal Brian Society. It started with the English Suite No. 1, Doctor Merryheart, and Fantastic Variations on an Old Rhyme. In 1980 came the second LP containing In Memoriam, For Valour, and Festal Dance. The project was completed in 1981 with the recordings of Burlesque Variations on an Original Theme, and Two Herrick Songs, Requiem for the Rose and The Hag. The recordings were produced by David Kent-Watson with the Hull Youth Orchestra conducted by Geoffrey Heald-Smith. For the recording of Brian's complete piano music, Cameo Classics went digital. Peter Hill's outstanding performances on a Bösendorfer Imperial at the Northern College of Music earned high praise from John Ogdon in his review for Tempo.
Only one of the great international virtuoso conductors showed any interest in Brian's music. Leopold Stokowski heard the Sinfonia Tragica and let it be known that he'd like to perform a Brian work. The upshot was the world premiere in 1973 of the 28th Symphony, in a BBC broadcast produced by Robert Simpson in Maida Vale Studio 1, and played by the New Philharmonia Orchestra. Anthony Payne in his Daily Telegraph review wrote: "It was fascinating to contemplate the uniqueness of the event - a 91-year-old conductor learning a new work by a 91-year-old composer."
Brian’s music owes a lot to Wagner, Bruckner, Elgar, Richard Strauss, Mahler and Bach. Like Bach and Bruckner, Brian was an organist, and the organ repertoire influenced his musical habits (and the organ appears in several of his symphonies). Other sources of influence are brass and military bands (Brian’s music is always very brassy and his music never strays far from the march, either slow and solemn, or fast and violent), and late Victorian street music. Brian’s music often includes a violin solo, like Vaughan Williams’ music, but whereas with Vaughan Williams the solo violin writing is long, sustained and eloquent and usually sets the lyric seal to the music, with Brian the violin solos are often poignant and brief and swept aside by the turbulent currents of the music.
However, as with the music of Robert Simpson, Brian’s great champion, in certain passages the music does suddenly verge on the pastoral, to the listener’s great surprise.
The only music that Brian’s could reasonably be mistaken for is some of the work of Arnold Bax, particularly Bax’s violent early symphonies (1 and 2). However, while Bax’s music sounds on first hearing more eloquent and connected, and more lyrical, some assert that Brian’s music has a greater flow and, despite its apparent fragmentary structure, a greater symphonic cohesion.
Brian’s music has several recognisable hallmarks: the liking of extreme dotted rhythms, deep brass notes, and various weird harp, piano and percussion timbres, and other sounds (and textures) than no-one else has conjured from the orchestra. Also typical are moments of hauntingly beautiful stillness, such as the slow harp arpeggio that is heard near the beginning and ending of the Eighth Symphony. But its most notable characteristics is its restlessness: rarely does one mood persist for long before it is contrasted, often abruptly, with another. Even in Brian’s slow movements, lyrical meditation does not often structure the music for long before restless thoughts intrude. Brian’s music is basically always tonal, but because of this it can be very violent, much more so than aleatory, atonal avant-garde music. Sometimes, for example at the end of the 3rd Symphony, Brian seems to be celebrating violence and the brute power of the music, but on repeated listening his music seems wiser than this — instead Brian seems to be enjoying making us think his music worships brutality. It is his comment on the world of the 1930s, racing towards world war.
However fragmentary Brian’s music is, it is never directionless; he maintains strong symphonic cohesion by long-term tonal processes (similar to Carl Nielsen’s ‘progressive tonality’, where the music is aiming towards a key, rather than being in a home key and returning to it). Although the fragmentary nature of his music militates against classical thematic unity, he often employs structural blocks of sound, where similar rhythms and thematic material allude to previous passages (as opposed to classical statement and recapitulation).
Brian’s symphonies start off with the colossal Gothic Symphony, and most of the early ones are large scale. He usually alludes to the classical four-movement structure of the symphony, even in single-movement works. As he progressed through his life his symphonies become shorter and more compact, and often sound Haydnesque, though the orchestra they employ is usually still large. The Gothic Symphony lasts an hour and a half, the last symphony of all, No. 32, barely twenty minutes, and yet it is no less substantial. This symphony is an extremely compressed contrapuntal unfolding of ideas that owes as much to Bach as to Romanticism, and includes the classical four movements — the finale has all the glory and ease of movement of the last movement of Mozart’s Symphony 41.
[edit] The LSSO Havergal Brian recordings
The Leicestershire Schools Symphony Orchestra created their own place in musical history when they made the very first commercial recording of Havergal Brian's music. To understand how this recording actually came about it's probably a good starting point to refer to an article that appeared in the local newspaper at the time:
Press Article: Leicester Mercury, 1972
County schools orchestra to make first recording of Composer's work
| “ | Leicestershire Schools Symphony Orchestra, with their conductor, Eric Pinkett, are to have the distinction of making the first gramophone record of music by the 96-year-old British composer Havergal Brian. Rehearsals are already under way and the recording will be done at the De Montfort Hall, Leicester, next July. The chosen works are the 10th and 21st symphonies and the record issued by Unicorn records is expected to be on sale by the following Autumn. Havergal Brian, born in Staffordshire and now living in Shoreham, Sussex, has become something of a legend in the musical world as a composer who is hardly ever performed but who nevertheless has worked quietly and contentedly over the years to amass an output that includes 32 symphonies (including the two hour long "Gothic") five operas, concertos for violin and cello and numerous choral works and songs. The fact that much of his music demands large forces is an economical reason for its rare appearances in concert halls and for the complete absence of recordings. However, he does have determined champions - among them Dr. Robert Simpson (A member of the BBC's music staff) who was mainly responsible for some recent broadcasts of Brian's works, and Alan Watkins, Press Association's deputy news editor and a music enthusiast with early training as a timpanist and percussionist. The recording project really all started from the time when Alan Watkins listened to the Leicestershire Schools Symphony Orchestra's existing discs. He was greatly impressed by the standard of playing and was struck by the thought that here was the solution to the economical problems of giving permanence to some of Brian's music. He wrote to the composer outlining the idea and obtained permission to explore possibilities. Within a short time, Mr. Watkins arranged a meeting between John Goldsmith (director of Unicorn records), Eric Pinkett and Dr. Simpson. The outcome was a wholehearted and enthusiastic decision to go ahead and the chosen works on Dr. Simpson's recommendation were the 10th and 21st symphonies both of about 30 minutes duration and for which orchestral parts for the 100 instrumentalists were available. Dr. Simpson, who is the foremost authority on Havergal Brian's music, has since spent a day at the County School of Music at Birstall where he talked to the Schools Orchestra about the composer and the two symphonies and listened to them being rehearsed by Eric Pinkett. He was delighted with their progress and reported favourably to Havergal Brian. | ” |
Symphonies Nos.10 and 21, conducted by James Loughran and Eric Pinkett respectively, were recorded at the De Montfort Hall, Leicester in 1972. The producer was Robert Simpson and Angus McKenzie was the recording engineer. The LP was released by Unicorn Records to great critical acclaim in 1973. A special edition of the television programme Aquarius called The Unknown Warrior gave considerable coverage to the recording session and a camera crew also joined members of the orchestra during a visit they made to the composer's home in Shoreham (see video links below).
Press Article: Sunday Express, 1972
| “ | Havergal Brian, Britain's most prolific but possibly least-performed classical composer, is to have his music recorded for the fist time at the age of 95. Paradoxically the disc will be cut by our top youth orchestra, the Leicestershire Schools Symphony Orchestra. Mr. Brian, described by BBC music expert Dr. Robert Simpson as a composer of the stature of Elgar is one of music's great enigmas. He has written 32 symphonies, more than three times as many as Beethoven, five operas, 114 songs, not to mention choral works. Yet until now none of them has been recorded. Says the composer from his seaside home at Shoreham, Sussex: "I am absolutely delighted that these young people are to record two of my symphonies. It shows how good they are. They are not easy works to play." | ” |
Four direct quotations of comments made by Alan Watkins in January 2006:
| “ | The world premiere recordings of ANY music by Havergal Brian were symphonies 10/21 for Unicorn, played by the Leicestershire Schools Symphony conducted by Eric Pinkett and Jimmy Loughran from the Halle. I know that because it was my idea and I organised it in conjunction with John Goldsmith, then the founder and owner of Unicorn Records, and Bob Simpson, composer and (at the time) BBC Music Department and Brian enthusiast. Several times I flew in from Prague to help and coach the percussion section in this very difficult music. It was recorded in the De Montfort Hall, Leicester, with me at one time standing behind the timpanist (a young lady of about 14/15 or so I think) to help her with the very difficult counting in case she came unstuck (She didn't). | ” |
| “ | The world premiere recordings of 10/21 or anything of Brian were by the kids of the Leicestershire Schools Symphony Orchestra (ages 14-18) who, on vinyl, were the first in the world to bring any of this music to life. I have previously posted on this and how we took the orchestra to meet the composer. The 10/21 recording is not perfect. There are certainly intonation problems (particularly with the strings) but this is often immensely difficult music to play, even for professional musicians, let alone a bunch of kids at school. They played so well, however, that I was in tears from time to time. One of the most moving moments of my life was seeing the orchestra meet the composer, sitting in a great semi circle around him, firing questions and chatting very happily with him. It was such a memorable occasion. They loved him and he loved them and I feel sure it would have brought more meaning to his music and to their playing . | ” |
| “ | The choice of symphony 10/21 (by Bob) was partly dictated by the fact that the parts for same were available and vaguely readable but only just with no cues and very poor page turns for some of the orchestra (wind in particular). I went through the percussion parts of both and ended up rewriting the set of parts for both inserting cues and correcting (twice) inaccurate rest indications and in 21 restoring a xylophone part that was correct in the full score but completely missing in the parts. Many wrong notes in the parts for tuned percussion in both symphonies. A mess, in fact. At that time all the parts were hand written, i.e not engraved. | ” |
| “ | It was a very long time ago and I cannot say accurately for certain but I don't think the composer wrote out for the parts for Symphony 10/21. His hand written notation that I have seen is difficult to follow - very difficult in some cases - and these parts were "well written" in terms of the calligraphy as it were but terribly inaccurate. It might have been him but, if so, he was at great age and they simply got corrected for him. I personally do not think it was him because I think he would not have made the page turn mistakes (particularly for wind and strings) nor left out an entire xylophone part (an instrument that mattered to him). | ” |
The thoughts of J.Z. (Johan) Herrenberg, a member of the Havergal Brian Society, October 2007
| “ | Absolutely incredible, being able to see this at last (i.e. 'The Unknown Warrior' video), 30 years after discovering this great composer! Very moving. And in particular seeing the opening of the Tenth played (an opening that made an indelible impression when I heard it for the first time) is really wonderful. It's great the documentary is still extant. This recording (10 & 21) has been extremely important to me personally. In 1980 I started studying English at the Free University in Amsterdam, a bit reluctantly, as I was determined to become a writer (I am one now). I couldn't get along with my fellow students. So I stopped coming. I only came there to borrow books from the library (on Milton, Shakespeare, Joyce et al.), and wandered through the historic centre of Amsterdam (I was born there, by the way). A friend of mine lived there in digs, and his mother had found Brian's 10th & 21st in a local library in the east of the country. Ever since hearing the Tenth, I had become completely obsessed by it, couldn't get enough of the work. So every time I called at my friend's lodgings, to see if he was in, and if he was my only request was - 'I want to hear the Tenth!' All through the 'eighties, as I was forging ahead with my own writing in great solitude, Brian was a continuous spur and inspiration. | ” |
Following the success of the Unicorn issue, a second Brian album was recorded by the LSSO in 1974. Hove Town Hall was the venue for the 22nd Symphony and the 23rd Psalm sessions where the orchestra was conducted by Laszlo Heltay. Eric Pinkett completed the disc with his account of the English Suite No.5 (Rustic Scenes) which was set down at Leicester De Montfort Hall. Both recording sessions were produced by Robert Simpson and the disc was issued by CBS in February 1975.
Press Article: Leicester Mercury, April 1974
LSSO puts four more works on record
| “ | The Leicestershire Schools Symphony Orchestra will be in Brighton tomorrow to make two recordings simultaneously. The BBC and CBS Records will each have a control room to tape performances of Havergal Brian's setting of the 23rd Psalm and his 22nd Symphony and also of Berlioz's "Resurrexit" and his "Death of Orpheus". All this music is being recorded for the first time - the BBC's tape for eventual Radio 3 broadcast and CBS's for processing into a disc which it is expected will be issued in the autumn. The conductor for all four works is Laszlo Heltay and the choir is the Brighton Festival Chorus, which Heltay directs. The LSSO was first in the field in making an LP of Havergal Brian's music with their brisk-selling disc of the 10th and 21st Symphonies, conducted respectively by the Halle's James Loughran and the orchestra's permanent director, Eric Pinkett who is Leicestershire's music adviser and founder of the County School of Music. Once again, the BBC's Robert Simpson (stalwart champion of Brian's music) is concerned with production and he is responsible too for performances of the two Berlioz rarities. Brian died, it will be remembered, without ever hearing the very first record of his music and it is interesting that following the LSSO's disc there is a projected one or other of the composer's symphonies by the London Philharmonic Orchestra. | ” |
[edit] Legacy
More of Brian's works have been published since the 1980s and '90s, making it perhaps less likely that his music will continue to be neglected, and the scarcity of well-rehearsed performances or mature interpretations that had previously made the quality of his music difficult to assess has been partially corrected through the series of professional recordings of many of Brian's symphonies that have been issued by the Marco Polo record label on CD. Many of the original recordings on various labels are being reissued, and only Symphonies Nos. 13, 19, 24, 26, 27, 29 and 30 have yet to receive an official release on any format.
[edit] Recordings of Havergal Brian Symphonies
| Work | Performers | Record Label (CD unless indicated) |
Availability | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Symphony No. 1, "Gothic" | Soloists/Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra, Ondrej Lenard | Marco Polo/Naxos | Available | |
| Symphony No. 1, "Gothic" | Soloists/BBC Symphony Orchestra, Sir Adrian Boult | Testament Records | Was previously an unavailable/pirated release of Sir Adrian Boult's BBC Symphony broadcast (1966) on Aries (2 LPs), but was rereleased in December 2009[1]. | |
| Symphony No. 2 | Moscow Symphony Orchestra, Tony Rowe | Marco Polo/Naxos | Available | |
| Symphony No. 2 | Dresden Symphony Orchestra, Ernest Weir | Aires (LP) | Unavailable/pirated release of a BBC broadcast with renamed artists. Actually Sir Charles Mackerras and the BBC Symphony (1979) | |
| Symphony No. 3 | BBC Symphony Orchestra, Lionel Friend | Hyperion | Available. | |
| Symphony No. 3 | Lisbon Conservatory Orchestra, Peter Michaels | Aires (LP) | Unavailable/pirated release of a BBC broadcast with renamed artists. Actually Stanley Pope and the BBC Symphony Orchestra (1974). | |
| Symphony No. 4, "Das Siegeslied" | Soloists/CSR Symphony Orchestra (Bratislava), Adrian Leaper | Marco Polo/Naxos | Available | |
| Symphony No. 4 | Edinburgh Youth Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, Sir Allistair MacKenzie | Aries (LP) | Unavailable/pirated release of a BBC broadcast with renamed artists. Actually John Poole and the London Philharmonic, BBC Choral Society etc. (1974). | |
| Symphony No. 5, "Wine of Summer" | São Paulo Symphony Orchestra, Francisco Teatro | Aries (LP) | Unavailable/pirated release of a BBC broadcast with renamed artists. Actually Stanley Pope and the New Philharmonia with Brian Rayner Cook (1976). | |
| Symphony No. 6, "Sinfonia tragica" | London Philharmonic Orchestra, Myer Fredman | Lyrita | Available | |
| Symphony No. 7 | Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Charles Mackerras | EMI Classics | Available | |
| Symphony No. 8 | Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Charles Groves | EMI Classics | Available | |
| Symphony No. 8 | Wales Symphony Orchestra, Colin Wilson | Aries (LP) | Unavailable/pirated release of a BBC broadcast with renamed artists. Actually Myer Fredman and the Royal Philharmonic (1971). | |
| Symphony No. 9 | Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Charles Groves | EMI Classics | Available | |
| Symphony No. 9 | Wales Symphony Orchestra, Colin Wilson | Aries (LP) | Unavailable/pirated release of a BBC broadcast with renamed artists. Actually Myer Fredman and the Royal Philharmonic (1971). | |
| Symphony No. 10 | Leicestershire Schools Symphony Orchestra, James Loughran | Unicorn-Kanchana | Unavailable | |
| Symphony No. 11 | National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, Adrian Leaper | Marco Polo | Unavailable | |
| Symphony No. 12 | CSR Symphony Orchestra (Bratislava), Adrian Leaper | Marco Polo/Naxos | Available | |
| Symphony No. 12 | Wales Symphony Orchestra, Colin Wilson | Aries (LP) | Unavailable/pirated release of a BBC broadcast with renamed artists. Actually Norman del Mar and the BBC Symphony (1966). | |
| Symphony No. 13 | Aries (LP) | Unavailable/pirated release of a BBC broadcast with renamed artists. Actually Stanley Pope and the Royal Philharmonic | ||
| Symphony No. 14 | Wales Symphony Orchestra, Colin Wilson | Aries (LP) | Unavailable/pirated release of a BBC broadcast with renamed artists. Actually Edward Downes and the London Symphony (1969). | |
| Symphony No. 15 | National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, Tony Rowe | Marco Polo | Unavailable | |
| Symphony No. 16 | London Philharmonic Orchestra, Myer Fredman | Lyrita | Available | |
| Symphony No. 17 | National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, Adrian Leaper | Marco Polo | ||
| Symphony No. 17 | "Hamburg Philharminic, Horst Werner" | Aries LP | Unavailable/pirated release of a BBC broadcast with renamed artists.actually Stanley Pope and the Royal Philharmonic (1978). | |
| Symphony No. 18 | BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Lionel Friend | Marco Polo/Naxos | Available | |
| Symphony No. 19 | Unavailable/pirated release of a BBC broadcast with renamed artists. Actually John Canarina, BB Scottish Orch. | |||
| Symphony No. 20 | Ukraine State Symphony Orchestra, Andrew Penny | Marco Polo | Unavailable | |
| Symphony No. 21 | Leicestershire Schools Symphony Orchestra, Eric Pinkett | Unicorn-Kanchana | Unavailable | |
| Symphony No. 22, "Symphonia brevis" | Leicestershire Schools Symphony Orchestra, Laszlo Heltay | CBS (LP) | Unavailable | |
| Symphony No. 23 | Wales Symphony Orchestra, Colin Wilson | Aries (LP) | Unavailable/pirated release of a BBC broadcast with renamed artists. Actually Bernard Goodman and the University of Illinois Orchestra (1973). | |
| Symphony No. 24 | "Hamburg Philharminic, Horst Werner" | Aries (LP) | Unavailable/pirated release of a BBC broadcast with renamed artists. Actually Myer Fredman and the London Symphony Orchestra. | |
| Symphony No. 25 | Ukraine State Symphony Orchestra, Andrew Penny | Marco Polo | Unavailable | |
| Symphony No. 25 | São Paulo Symphony Orchestra, Francisco Teatro | Aries (LP) | Unavailable/pirated release of a BBC broadcast with renamed artists. Actually John Canarina and the BBC Scottish Symphony (1976). | |
| Symphony No. 26 | Aries (LP) | Unavailable/pirated release of a BBC broadcast with renamed artists. Actually Vernon Handley, New Philharmonia | ||
| Symphony No. 27 | Aries (LP) | Unavailable/pirated release of a BBC broadcast with renamed artists. Actually John Mackerras, Philharminia | ||
| Symphony No. 28 | The Hamburg Philharmonic Orchestra, Horst Werner | Aries (LP) | Unavailable/pirated release of a BBC broadcast with renamed artists. Actually Leopold Stokowski and the New Philharmonia (1973). It was the last World Premiere that Stokowski (aged 91) conducted. | |
| Symphony No. 29 | Aries LP | Unavailable/pirated release of a BBC broadcast with renamed artists. Actually Myer Fredman, Philharmonia. | ||
| Symphony No. 30 | Aries LP | Unavailable/pirated release of a BBC broadcast with renamed artists. Actually Harry Newstone, Philharmonia | ||
| Symphony No. 31 | Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Charles Mackerras | EMI Classics | Available | |
| Symphony No. 32 | National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, Adrian Leaper | Marco Polo | Unavailable |
[edit] References
[edit] External links
- Havergal Brian Society website
- Leicestershire Schools Symphony Orchestra website
- Brian and the LSSO Information and short audio extracts from the LSSO 1970s recordings.
- One of Stoke-on-Trent's local heroes
- Havergal Brian myspace
[edit] Videos
The Unknown Warrior A documentary featuring the LSSO recording session of symphonies Nos. 10 and 21 and an informal interview with the composer
A short video of the LSSO from De Montfort Hall, Leicester, 1972.
Rehearsal of Symphony No.10 by the LSSO reunion orchestra in 1998
[edit] Books
- Eastaugh, Kenneth. Havergal Brian, the making of a composer. London: Harrap. c 1976. ISBN 0-245-52748-6
- MacDonald, Malcolm. The Symphonies of Havergal Brian (Discussion in 3 volumes—volume 1: Symphonies 1–12; volume 2: Symphonies 13–29; volume 3: Symphonies 30–32, Survey, and Summing-up.) London: Kahn & Averill, 1974–1983. ISBN 0-900707-28-3.
- MacDonald, Malcolm, ed. Havergal Brian on music: selections from his journalism. London: Toccata Press, c 1986. ISBN 0-907689-19-1 (v.1).
- Nettel, Reginald. Ordeal by Music: The Strange Experience of Havergal Brian. London and New York: Oxford University Press. c 1945.
- Nettel, Reginald (also Foreman, Lewis). Havergal Brian and his music. London: Dobson. c 1976. ISBN 0-234-77861-X.
