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well, they done did it
Jul. 17th, 2011 11:57 pm. . . performed Havergal Brian's Symphony #1 "The Gothic", that is -- the one that requires about 287 orchestras and 150 choirs (I approximate) and lasts about 1hr 46min (I don't). I had other stuff to do tonight so wasn't able to listen to the whole thing consecutively; but thanks to those nice folk at the Beeb I have another 7 days during which to listen to it properly.
So can you: just go here.
First impressions: I have some difficulty with choral symphonies (I'm the guy who wishes Beethoven had stopped his 9th after the first three movements), and I 'fess that when the singers first appeared, at about the 42min mark, my heart sank -- they seemed to be all over the place. I don't know if that's just the way Brian scored it or if, well, there were nerves. Later, though, it all seemed to be working beautifully. Stuff like this aside, I am just so thrilled I can hear this work: I'd read about it, but thought I'd never hear it.
One of the great things about the BBC Proms is that, in among all the oh-no-not-another-performance-of-a-Liszt-piano-concerto moments, there are times like this -- usually a bunch of them per season -- when you can hear performances of works that will perhaps never, because of their dimensions or obscurity, be made commercially available. I think it quite possible that no one on the whole of LJ will ever within their lifetimes have the opportunity, after tonight, to witness a live performance of this symphony -- heaven knows how much it must have cost to assemble the performers! Yet, thanks to the Proms, for at least the next few days you can listen to it online.
Some of the greats I've discovered through the Proms? Schnittke's Nagasaki (if you like Orff's Carmina Burana you'll go nuts over this) and Gliere's Symphony #3 -- both of them absolutely and completely stamped on my memory, the former beginning my own personal Schnittke fan odyssey, the latter initiating a Gliere CD-buying splurge as I added the symphonies to my collection. (Some of Gliere's other stuff, I discovered, ain't so wonderful.) Really, though, to single out a couple of composers/works is to give a false impression: I've discovered so many wonderful things through the Proms over the years that I've long since lost count.
Of course, the Proms are nasty socialist entities, spawn of the Devil, broadcast by that Jesus-denying islamofascist enterprise, slave of the state, known as the BBC -- you know, the news organization that shows how in awe it is of its paymaster, the UK government, by deploying people like Jeremy Paxman and Stephen Sackur to toss ministers softball questions.
Yeah, right.
What the US, a much richer country than the UK, needs to start doing is offering PBS sufficient funding that it, too, can stage something like the Proms season. Why? Let's face it, every time the BBC stages the Proms, the UK scores a major diplomatic coup: this is a series of concerts listened to around the world. Meantime, the US offers pop/country awards shows interrupted by commercial breaks.
