Myer Fredman, Lionel Friend, Sir Charles Mackerras conductors
Philharmonia Orchestra
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Heritage HTGCD 130
Fredman really tears into the tumultuous opening of Symphony 29: if Alexander Walker (Naxos) makes the central melody sing more, this is the more convincing overall. The brief II movement feels disconsolate, the aged Brian searching for something at the back of his mind, before anger snaps him awake. III is an eerie broken-backed dance, flickering sepia footage from a distant world.
A growl takes IV back to the mood of I, and soon the music is piling headlong for (yet) another of Brian’s immense climaxes – until he side-steps into one of his most astonishing and moving inspirations; a timely reminder of just what a genuinely original mind Brian possessed. The 1978 recording offers good clear sound with a wide dynamic range.
The compact Symphony 30 is one of Brian’s most enigmatic. The only way to grasp this intense, dramatic, often violent music is to decode its densely-layered meaning bar by bar. Mind, I am not sure that either available recording is yet ideal – this (Friend) perhaps too relaxed, the other (Brabbins/Dutton) too rushed? The 1989 sound is a little opaque – nothing ruinous, but a shame. The ideal No 30 still awaits, but, in the meantime, this is well worth your attention.
Symphony 31 may be Brian’s most instantly likeable, with its almost childlike opening theme. T H White once characterised baroque music as ‘like this and like that’, and similarly here is mostly serene give and take, light and shade. Brian’s late music sometimes conveys the actual sense of great age, and this is the gaze of one who seems content to watch the passing of sunshine and storm-cloud…and if he seems to be sometimes talking to himself, what he has to say is so engrossing that it is worth straining to catch every word.
Brian’s last symphony is in some ways its mirror, using naive musical material to a different, darker end. Fredman gives the music time to breathe, allowing its sheer strangeness – its dream-like hesitations and ruminations emerge – a curt and elliptical lyricism, and a yearning that speaks not so much of joy and sorrow as of their memory. So much hard-earned wisdom is packed into this massively laconic music that it may take as long to truly fathom as it did the composer to achieve – a lifetime. The 1978 sound is good, if sometimes a little raw.
This invaluable compilation comprises an excellent introduction to really late late Brian – and as such a body of endlessly fascinating and uniquely rewarding music.
Review by Kevin Mandry