Searing Intensity Havergal Brian's 'Gothic' Symphony - impresses ROBERT ANDERSON 'A gigantic setting ...'

Brian was not 'Havergalised' at the font but by personal choice, out of respect for a family that wrote many hymns and was often reverend. There are four of them in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, and I was lucky enough to be taught by a fifth. Certainly I heard all about Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, and indeed played in it before finally conducting it. Not a word, though, was said about Berlioz's Grande Messe des Morts or Mahler 8, and I'm not sure that Havergal Brian's 'Gothic' Symphony would have been considered worth a mention...

HAVERGAL BRIAN

ROYAL ALBERT HALL

LONDON

UNITED KINGDOM

HENRY WOOD PROMS

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

FAUST

PETER AUTY

ORCHESTRAL MUSIC

HYPERION RECORDS LTD