This new CD from Heritage Records is the fifth
installment of its ongoing cycle of archival recordings of Havergal Brian’s
music. Here, the 8th, 9th,
22nd and 24th symphonies are heard, featuring the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the London
Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Myer Fredman. The webpage explains
that the audio is derived from the original BBC master tapes, “sensitively
remastered” by sound engineer Harvey Summers. It should be mentioned that these
recordings circulated for many years as “bootleg” LPs.
Myer Fredman (1932-2014) was a British born conductor. For much of his career he worked with the Glyndebourne Festival and the Glyndebourne Touring Opera. During the 1970s Fredman moved to Australia, where he was involved with the State Opera of South Australia and later Opera Australia. Latterly he lived in Hobart, where he taught at the University of Tasmania. I first came across his achievement on the Lyrita recordings of Bax's 1st and 2nd Symphonies (SRCS53 and 54). His relationship with Brian began in the early 1970s when he made recordings of the 6th and the 16th symphonies, also for Lyrita (SRCS67). Other British composers that benefited from his attention included Britten, Delius, Vaughan Williams, Robert Still and Edmund Rubbra. For several years he was a Vice-President of the Havergal Brian Society.
The liner notes explain that Fredman met and corresponded with the composer when he was living at Shoreham-by-Sea. It states that he had a great sympathy towards his music, particularly in evaluating each symphony’s overarching structure and in “clarifying Brian’s sometimes complex orchestral textures.”
The inspiration for the gloomy Symphony No.8 in
B flat major (1949) was Goethe’s “macabre ballad” Die Braut von Korinth
(The Bride of Corinth) which majors on sex, ghosts, vampirism, and generally
anti-Christian rhetoric. The symphony is played in three continuous sections,
forming a single movement. Structurally, it is unorthodox. It is really a
collection of “musical panels’ which cohere into a satisfying unity. Much of
the progress is slow with only the occasional increase in tempo. There is a
dirge like feel with much of this music, which is by turns gloomy, sometimes compelling,
and occasionally quite beautiful. Midway, the Symphony appears to come to a
dead stop, with minimal sound, before slowly building up into a macabre dance,
and then collapsing into an almost romantic nocturne. This latter mood seems to
deny the work’s background plot. Fredman creates a fine balance been the
inevitable horror and a certain positive attractiveness.
Symphony No.8 uses a large orchestra including a glockenspiel and xylophone. Lasting for 22 minutes, the force of this symphony is concentrated. It was first heard in a studio broadcast made on 1 and 2 February 1954, by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, under Sir Adrian Boult. The liner notes remind the reader that this was the first time a Brian symphony had been performed (despite the composer having written seven previously).
Havergal Brian completed his Symphony No.9
during November 1951. It was not performed until Norman Del Mar and the London
Symphony Orchestra gave a live BBC studio performance broadcast on the Third
Programme on 22 March 1958. This work is
written in three movements, played without a break. The progress of the
symphony is from “Sturm und Drang – storm and stress - through to ultimate
victory. There are many fascinating byways where there is relaxation and
introspection before the “bombastic” coda of the final Allegro moderato brings
the symphony to a triumphant conclusion, complete with bells and organ. This musical
“journey” would seem to reflect Brian’s complex “inner psychological argument.”
Notwithstanding the seemingly conventional symphonic structure, there are times when the listener feels that they are hearing a series of connected episodes. This is, quite naturally, the case in the finale, which is a good, old fashioned, rondo. I guess that it is simply lack of familiarity that makes us struggle to hear the underlying unity.
Despite its seemingly diminutive size, the Symphony No.22 Sinfonia Brevis packs a punch. The liner notes suggests that its power is the result of “extreme compression, rather than miniaturization.” Lasting less than ten minutes, the two-movements explore considerable depths of emotion and concern. Malcolm Macdonald felt that it evoked “a sense of strange landscapes and rumours of war.” Certainly, being finished between 1964 and 1965 it represents a view of the then recently passed Cuban Missile Crisis, the ongoing Cold War, and the intensification of the Vietnam War. The opening movement, Maestoso e ritmico, immediately engages the listener in “boiling conflict.” The booklet points out the “upward surging figure heard in the bass” heard in the opening bars, which goes on to dominate much of the proceedings. There is some relaxation as this movement progresses, but this is short lived. Without a break, the Tempo di marcia e ritmico-Adagio begins to expound an ominous march, which eventually gives way to an almost romantic violin solo. Material from the work’s opening pages returns before it closes with a “bleak coda” suggesting only a temporary halt in the hostilities.
John Pickard indicates that the “ghosts
haunting the previous two symphonies have evidently been laid to rest” in the
Symphony No.24 in D major, written in 1964. The reason for this assumption is,
in his opinion, that “this work is as bright and optimistic as they were dark
and troubled.” I am not sure that this is the whole story. For me, there is
much in the flamboyant and energetic “victory parade” that is confident, but
there is also something almost sarcastic in these pages. Much of the following
development seems to me to be gloomy and reflective.
The entire symphony is designed as a single movement, although this is divided into three sections, with connecting and contrasting episodes. There is much “beauty, warmth and tenderness” in the concluding Adagio section. Here it begins to discover hope and triumph. But even in the final bars there is an occasional edge that is only sublimated in the last chord.
The extensive, informative liner notes are
authored by composer and Havergal Brian authority, John Pickard.
As noted above, these transfers have been
remastered from the original tapes. The resulting sound quality is outstanding.
It is one of the signs of getting old that recordings made in the early 1970s
seem quite recent. The fact is, that these are half a century old, and of
remarkable quality. The performances are well-wrought. Brian’s music is a
fusion of romantic tropes, dissonance, radical formal constructs, nods towards
classical structures and the development of continual variation. His
orchestration ranges from the highly nuanced to the downright unwieldy. The impact
of his music can look backward in time, and also, forward. Myer Fredman has
absorbed all these facets producing what are superb and possibly definitive
recordings.
Havergal Brian (1876-1972)
Symphony No. 8 in B-Flat Minor (1949)
Symphony No. 9 in A Minor (1951)
Symphony No. 22 – Symphonia Brevis (1964-65)
Symphony No. 24 in D Major (1964)
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra/Myer Fredman (Nos.8, 9, and 22); London Philharmonic Orchestra/Myer Fredman (No.24)
rec. 27 June 1971 (No.8); 28 March 1971 (No.9 and No.22); 1 April 1973 (No.24)
Heritage HTGCD 146
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