Havergal Brian: King of the Symphony

You thought Mahler was the unrivaled king of the maximalist symphony? You considered his second and third to be the pinnacles of the genre in terms of length and the eighth to be the acme in relation to the number of performers involved? You assumed no composer since Hadyn would ever write more than a handful of symphonies? You'll have to think again: Havergal Brian's first symphony („The Gothic“) spans roughly one and three quarters of an hour and its final movement is an entire oratorio in its own right – it is today recognised (by the Guinness Book of Records) as the largest symphony ever written. Over the course of his (admittedly almost biblically long life) life, Brian finished a staggering 32 symphonies, eight of which after his 90th birthday. If the sky's your destination, this is your man.

Especially so, since Brian wasn't just about „big“. The first movement, an extract of which you can listen to in this clip, is full of haunting string washes, ethereal solos at the borders of sound and silence and goldenly gleaming brass chord progressions. This isn't Gothic, this is Star Wars, one listener commented – which is strangely true, but not in a derogatory sense. Certainly worthy of a rediscovery, especially since there are finally a couple of fine recordings available: The vintage 1966 version broadcast by the BBC (merely available as a bootleg for decades and re-released by Testament only last year), a Marco Polo interpretation as well as the budget edition by Naxos.

It would have given great pleasure to Brian to see his work slowly attaining more widespread attention. He, however, only got to see a tiny fraction of his oeuvre performed, some of it very late in his life. Even today, as „the official Brian Havergal“ website reports, „the Australian premiere of Brian’s vast Gothic symphony, scheduled to take place in December 2010, is encountering an unexpected funding shortfall of £15,000“, putting the first performance of the symphony in thirty years in danger – showing once again that it's not easy to be the king of maximalists.