British Music

[oleander55]

Wow! J.Z.H., that's a perceptive observation!  I, alas, do not have perfect pitch, so I hadn't noticed it.  I do have the score, and a tuning fork, so I'll investigate this when I get back next week.  (It will be an easy fix.)
I have always loved the 2nd, but it's the two Leslie Head performances that do it for me.  I really think that he had the measure of the score, even with his non-professional orchestra.  I have always been disappointed with the Mackerras - esp the first two movements (way too glib, too impetuous...)  - and I heard at the time that the Mackerras performance was was severely under-rehearsed because Mackerras spent so much time trying to figure out the physical positioning of the horns in the Scherzo,etc..  And, of course, the Rowe..     To me, Leslie Head was one of the most perceptive of all of the early Brian conductors.  His version of the 32nd takes the slow movement at a tempo that reveals it to be (to me anyway) one of the most profound, and heartbreaking, movements in all of music.  The Leaper and (surprisingly) the Fredman versions can't touch it.  I need to suggest to the Havergal Brian Society that they do an article on Leslie Head.

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Call me Johan for ease of use...

Do you have (any of) the Leslie Head performances? I remember visiting the British Music Information Centre during the 1980s. I asked for some Brian and I heard the first few minutes of the Second in a performance I could never place since then. So that was Leslie Head's...

I must say that Downes is most impressive in the closing pages of No. 21! (I have the score, too, bought it (and 8, 10 and 22) during the early 80s from Graham Hatton of Musica Viva. I don't have perfect pitch, but I noticed the music sounded a tad too bright and checked with a virtual keyboard online!)

[oleander55]

Johan,
It just occurred to me how much easier it will be for me to use my own keyboard!  Yes, I have the 2nd and 3rd of the Leslie Head performances on tape, and will post them next week.
Mark

 

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Johan,
It just occurred to me how much easier it will be for me to use my own keyboard!  Yes, I have the 2nd and 3rd of the Leslie Head performances on tape, and will post them next week.
Mark

Wonderful! The past few days have been blessedly Brian-centric thanks to your contributions. Just as a reminder: Martyn Brabbbins is (or has been) recording a new Dutton CD with Brian's VC, Symphony No. 13 and English Suite No. 4 as we are (were) glutting ourselves on the new/old radio recordings... There have been worse times for Havergal Brian and his admirers.

[Dundonnell]

(Not quite sure where to post this It could equally go into 'Download Requests' )

I think that it is time for an update on those mid to late 20th century British symphonies which have neither made it to cd nor have been uploaded for members of this site. The number has grown significantly smaller over the past few months due to the generosity of members

Arthur Butterworth:   Nos. 6 and 7
Arnold Cooke:            Nos. 2 and 6
Ruth Gipps:                No.1
Iain Hamilton:           Nos. 1 and 4
Alun Hoddinott:         No.1
Wilfred Josephs:       Nos. 2, 4, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12
Malcolm Lipkin:         No.1
John McCabe:            No.7
Anthony Milner:         No.3
John Veale:               No.2
Thomas Wilson:        No.5

I have not included those symphonies which-to my knowledge-have never been performed( Edgar Bainton's 1st, Stanley Bates Nos. 1 and 2, John Gardner's 2nd, Robert Still Nos. 1 and 2, Graham Whettam's Sinfonia Prometeica and William Wordsworth's 6th.)

I also hasten to add that this is not an exclusive list There are other symphonies.....the Holbrooke for example(only No.4 is on disc).

[Jimfin]

Thank you so much for this, Dundonnell: it's good to keep an eye on this, and to be heartened by the shrinking of the list (and further shrinking pending, as the Butterworth and Bate symphonies have a good chance of recordings, and the Holbrooke 3rd is supposed to be in the pipeline...

[jowcol]

Taliesin by Alun Hoddinot


National Orchestra of Wales
François-Xavier Roth, Brangwyn Hall,
Swansea Festival of Music and the Arts, 10.10.2009
BBC Broadcast

From the collection of Karl Miller



This was Hoddonot's last major opus, and was premiered posthumously at the 2009 Swansea festival, and latter broadcast by the BBC.  I've pulled a few descriptions of this work and the performance which I'll share below:

BBC 3 Description:

Afternoon on 3 closes with a concert featuring the first broadcast of "Taliesin", the final work composed by Alun Hoddinott, who for over half a century was at the heart of Welsh musical life. Penny is joined by Swansea Festival director Huw Tregelles Williams, to hear about the new piece, the composer and this remarkable concert from the 2009 festival, featuring the orchestra's Associate Guest Conductor Francois-Xavier Roth.


Preview by Karen Price

IT was the last piece that eminent Welsh composer Alun Hoddinott worked on. Now, a year after his death, Taliesin is to be given its world premiere in the concert hall where he discovered a love for classical music as a young boy.

BBC National Orchestra of Wales will perform the orchestral tone poem during the Swansea Festival of Music and the Arts, which opens next week.

The concert at Brangwyn Hall, which is where Hoddinott first heard a professional orchestra, will also celebrate the 75th anniversary of the venue.

Taliesin was commissioned by BBC Now to celebrate what would have been Hoddinott's 80th birthday this year but he passed away in March 2008.

The composer's family are due to attend the concert on October 10. Hoddinott helped festival chairman Huw Tregelles Williams pull together the whole programme, which also includes Berlioz's Overture: Roman Carnival and Saint-Saens' Symphony No 3 for organ.

"He was a huge admirer of the French repertoire," says Williams. "As someone who knew Alun very well, it's obviously going to be very moving to hear his last piece of work performed."

During a pre-concert talk, Hoddinott's first published piece, Opus 1 String Trio, will be played by three members of the orchestra.

"So both his first and last opuses will be heard during the same evening."

Williams is also delighted that they are able to mark the milestone birthday of the Brangwyn Hall, which is one of several venues throughout Swansea which will host festival events.

"As a schoolboy, I was taken to concerts during the Swansea Festival," he says.

"I remember the first performance in Wales of Benjamin Britten's War Requiem. The acoustics in the hall are still fantastic today."





Review by Peter Reynolds

FEW composers and orchestras have enjoyed a continuous relationship lasting for more than 60 years.
On Saturday night, at this year's Swansea Festival in the Brangwyn Hall, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales gave the final premiere by one of Wales' most important composers, Alun Hoddinott.

Taliesin (a BBC commission) was the last music completed by Alun Hoddinott, who died in March last year.

His music was first performed by the then BBC Welsh Orchestra in May 1949 when he was just 19 years old.
Inspired by the life of the sixth century Welsh bard Taliesin, it is a finely wrought, 25-minute work evoking not so much the distant Celtic world of the bard, as his significance as the essence of Welshness.

Falling into four distinct interlinked sections, it evokes the spirit of a symphony in all but name.

The music has the energy and invention of a man half Hoddinott's age, but it also has the effortless economy and total mastery reflecting a lifetime of composition.

Every bar is permeated with the personality of its composer: glittering bejewelled textures, sections of quicksilver speed and brooding sombre brass, all framed by a compelling ticking idea heard at the outset and returning at the work's strangely luminous resolution.

No orchestra is better imbued with Hoddinott's style than the BBC National Orchestra of Wales which, conducted with terrific intensity by their associate guest conductor, François Xavier Roth, gave a passionately committed performance of this important premiere.

The concert also included a sparkling account of Berlioz's overture, Roman Carnival, Debussy's Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune and a thrilling account of Saint-Saëns' Organ Symphony with the conductor's father, Daniel Roth, as soloist.

A fascinating talk by Geraint Lewis, prior to the concert, also contained an early string trio piece by Hoddinott, the manuscript of which only recently came to light.

The event, promoted by both the BBC and Welsh Music Guild, demonstrated that, even at the age of 20, Alun Hoddinott was fully in control of his craft. The work had a fine performance under three principals from the BBC National Orchestra of Wales: Lesley Hatfield, Emma Sheppard and John Senter.

The concert will be broadcast at a later date.





Review by Neil Reeve

Swansea Festival Of The Arts 2009(4) - Berlioz, Hoddinott, Debussy, Saint-Saëns: BBC National Orchestra of Wales/François-Xavier Roth, Brangwyn Hall, Swansea, 10.10.2009 (NR)


This concert was notable for the première of Taliesin, the last orchestral work completed by Alun Hoddinott, who died in March 2008. It was commissioned for what would have been his 80th birthday earlier this year, and it was fitting that it should have had its first performance in Swansea, the city in whose environs he spent both his formative and his final years - and in the Brangwyn Hall, where, as Geraint Lewis remarked in a pre-concert talk, Hoddinott would have heard live orchestral music for the first time. This early-evening taster event also featured members of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales playing Hoddinott's String Trio, opus 1, so we had both the opening and the closing of his career; the trio, composed when he was 19, around the same time as his celebrated Clarinet Concerto, was similarly spiky, confident, energetically and invitingly lilting. It certainly left me hoping that someone would soon embark on a serious revaluation of Hoddinott's writing for string ensembles of all kinds.

Taliesin itself, effectively a one-movement symphony, massively unfolded from a four-note motif, rising or inverted. There were intriguing varieties of harmony and pulse, and bouts of almost Holstian merriment among more shadowy episodes. It was also a very busy work, using the full range of orchestral resources, with the percussionists in particular having virtually to run from one instrument station to another in their efforts to keep up. As with several other symphonic pieces by Hoddinott, there was a sense of the musical material being constantly redistributed between different sections of the orchestra in a kind of dialectical or argumentative pattern – appropriate perhaps to the figure of Taliesin in his mythical incarnation as a spirit of mutability. But there was also something overly restless and frustrating about this continual fading in and out of shapes and colours, something which began after a while to sound formulaic, a technical ploy rather than the result of any inner momentum or real necessity. I would like to hear the piece again to see if I'm wrong.














.

[albion]

Many thanks to jowcol for

Alun Hoddinott - Taliesin (2007)

and for providing the extensive 'booklet notes' above.

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Just a few early thoughts on the recently-uploaded recordings of the first (broadcast) performance of Havergal Brian's Symphony No. 4, 'Das Siegeslied', from 3 July 1967, with the BBC Northern Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Maurice Handford, and the first (broadcast) performance of Brian's Symphony No. 21, with the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sir Edward Downes.

The sound of these latest additions isn't as good the earlier ones (2, 3, 4 and 7), but that doesn't matter, they are of huge historic interest. Many passages go rather disastrously wrong in 'Das Siegeslied', because Handford often seems to be in quite a hurry, so that the choirs can hardly keep up. It shows you how excellent Poole was in 1974 (even a flawed performance is always instructive, even there details stand out you didn't notice before). As for No. 21, the LSO play it very well, I think. Downes follows the score quite faithfully, although he completely forgets the Allargando at the end of the third movement. The way he shapes the final pages of the work as a whole are, however, masterly, and those chords ending the work are much more imposing than in the LSSO performance. But, again, the LSSO did a more than creditable job in 1972, and the performances are evenly-matched.

[John Whitmore]

An unbelievable amount of thanks to MVS, I'm completely stunned.

And, thanks so much, too, to Dundonnell, Albion and John Whitmore for their work and making all this available in the first place.

Hear hear!

I have already started to revise my opinion of symphonies 2 and 4...

P.S. I am (pleasantly) surprised at how many people actually like Brian's music (and even consider him their favourite composer). I also check Twitter regularly and have discovered other music-lovers who don't find his music as impenetrable as it is often presented. A wonderful development, that bodes well for the future.

P.P.S. The recording of No. 21 is between a major second and a minor third too high, if I'm not mistaken. The drum-roll that starts the main Allegro e con Animo after the slow introduction should be a B flat. It sounds more like D flat... But John Whitmore has perfect pitch...P.P.P.S Second movement is a minor second too high... As is the third movement... Final movement: major second too high.

Apart from these sonic nitpicks, I like Downes's performance a lot. It isn't better than the one by the LSSO, though. They are about even.

Trouble is, this is as much use as a chocolate fire guard as far as this tape of 21 is concerned. See my post on the main HB forum 10 minutes ago where I made a couple of suggestions, one of which would involve me getting hold of the cassette - assuming it's a cassette of course. On a wider point, it's great to get new improved versions and it's no criticism whatsoever of the work carried out by people including myself and especially Colin. Maybe next year the owner of a top of the range reel to reel recorder will come along with further improvements from his or her long lost collection that's been residing in the loft. Long may that continue. 

[hbswebmaster]

Mark,

Hi! That's a great suggestion about a Leslie Head article for the Brian Society Newsletter. He was a guest at the AGM five or six years ago being interviewed by Lewis Foreman, and a video exists of the conversation which could easily be transcribed. He had some great comments about taking the Brian 2nd 'on tour'!

Now all I have to do is find the charger for my video camera...

Keep your eyes peeled!

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Just to make it easier, this is what John Whitmore wrote on the Brian thread of the GMG Classical Music Forum:

I've just been listening and trying to sort it out. The problem is that the tape speed changes throughout each movement. I corrected the opening of the first movement into E flat and all was well but by the middle of the movement the pitch had dropped and by the end it had dropped still further. The tape is slowing down from beginning to end. If I correct the pitch by using the last few notes as markers the opening is no longer in E flat. Is this from a cassette? I wonder if the uploader can rewind the tape a few times to free it up and then have another go at the transfer. It's not possible to pitch correct this as I did for the upload of the 10th which started in the key of B and three quarters minor and at least had the common decency to be equally inaccurate throughout the full length of the piece. It could be the tired old belt on the cassette player of course. I've got a Nakamichi that's still in great nick. If it comes to it I could try to make a transfer.

[oleander55]

Well, since none of the other reel-to-reel transfers I've made recently are afflicted with the same problem (as far as I know- and if they are having that problem, then I'll have to switch to the Pioneer RT-701 rather than the Akai and re-do the uploads.  The (reel-to-reel) Akai uses idler wheels to run so there aren't any belts to stretch), it's probably not the deck - it's my original which was purchased from a less than reliable source.  It's probably a 10th-generation copy of an original anyway! If the change in speed is constant throughout the each individual movement, it should be an easy fix for a software program that allows one to plot a continuous change in speed throughout.  I was shocked to discover that mine doesn't have that feature!  I'll suggest that they include it in their next upgrade.  I had, just like you, been able to lower the (Pope) 10th which apparently was recorded at some point on a deck running consistently slow. (My version was pitched way too sharp.) 
Back in the '60's and 70's before computers and digitizing, things were a mess. There were a VERY few sources for "underground" tapes and they could turn out to be anything from great to unlistenable to totally bogus.  For a couple of years, I though Brian's 7th had three movements and the last movement of the 7th was the 12th symphony because that's how they were labeled in the source's catalog and how they were sent to me  - on separate tapes!

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

For a couple of years, I though Brian's 7th had three movements and the last movement of the 7th was the 12th symphony because that's how they were labeled in the source's catalog and how they were sent to me  - on separate tapes!

[John Whitmore]

Well, since none of the other reel-to-reel transfers I've made recently are afflicted with the same problem (as far as I know- and if they are having that problem, then I'll have to switch to the Pioneer RT-701 rather than the Akai and re-do the uploads.  The (reel-to-reel) Akai uses idler wheels to run so there aren't any belts to stretch), it's probably not the deck - it's my original which was purchased from a less than reliable source.  It's probably a 10th-generation copy of an original anyway! If the change in speed is constant throughout the each individual movement, it should be an easy fix for a software program that allows one to plot a continuous change in speed throughout.  I was shocked to discover that mine doesn't have that feature!  I'll suggest that they include it in their next upgrade.  I had, just like you, been able to lower the (Pope) 10th which apparently was recorded at some point on a deck running consistently slow. (My version was pitched way too sharp.)  Back in the '60's and 70's before computers and digitizing, things were a mess. There were a VERY few sources for "underground" tapes and they could turn out to be anything from great to unlistenable to totally bogus.  For a couple of years, I though Brian's 7th had three movements and the last movement of the 7th was the 12th symphony because that's how they were labeled in the source's catalog and how they were sent to me  - on separate tapes!

The Pope 10th from the HBS was flat and slow and had to be speeded up and moved up to the right pitch by around a semitone. I could smell a rat from the very first note. It's still a very ponderous opening (but then again as an LSSOer I'm dreadfully biased and think we did it far better!) but at least it's in C minor now. It sounded most peculiar in its first incarnation. As you say, the tape of 21 is probably 30th generation and just about beyond fixing. I've had another listen and it's not a linear thing - the pitch changes at different places throughout each movement. It drops, picks up and then drops again. It's like being seasick on a boat and all reference points keep shifting. I can't see how a computer programme can sort this. It IS posiible but you would have to work in 10 or 15 second chunks and then keep moving forward. Lots of hassle!!