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Havergal Brian Symphonies 22-24

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Author Topic: Havergal Brian Symphonies 22-24  (Read 4716 times)
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Dundonnell
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« Reply #45 on: May 04, 2013, 09:00:35 pm »

No one has added any further comment to Johan's post in reaction to listening to the new Naxos disc.

My own reactions are-

The music is superbly recorded, played and conducted :) The disc fully lives up to the expectations aroused by those who had heard the master tapes. All concerns about Naxos not being able to ensure crisp, razor-sharp recording quality and going back to the sometimes somewhat dubious recording standards that came out of Moscow 15-20 years are fully laid to rest :)

The Russian musicians of the New Russia State Symphony Orchestra play superlatively well and are conducted by a man who clearly understands the music and is able to inspire his players. Note-and I don't think I had noticed this before-that whilst the two recent Dutton Havergal Brian discs were recorded over two days by the RSNO this Naxos recording took place over FOUR days. That simply would NOT be possible with a Western orchestra. It probably goes some way to explaining why the performances are so assured and the orchestra sounds so inside the idiom.

.....and the music itself ???

Ah well, there lies the problem for me. It is impressive, it sounds grand, it engages my intellect.....but there is something missing, something intangible, something as allusive as the music itself. Ultimately....it does not move me, it fails to elicit an emotional response-as I respond to Wagner, or Bruckner, or Sibelius, or Vaughan Williams, or Shostakovich, for example.

Why ??? Well partly that lies in my own emotional aesthetic and its response to the music I hear but it is also, it seems to me, that Brian is so terse, so elliptical that he does not allow the music the time to grow and expand in my consciousness...........as it does over the long haul of a symphony say by one of the composers I listed above.
The journey is too short! I am gripped by a particular passage and next moment it is gone, to be replaced by something which might sound quite different.

It IS fascinating music. It IS good music......but, there is a "but" ;D

In some ways turning to the final piece on the disc, the English Suite No.1, is a "relief"(is not the right word). It is simpler, more straightforward music. Its aspirations are so much more obvious- to depict scenes of nature or carnival I can picture in my imagination.

Brian's music undoubtedly repays intensive study and repeated listenings. It will always impress me......but it will never quite fully match the work of the composers I still regard as the giants of the last 150 years.
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