Havergal Brian (1876-1972)
Complete Choral Songs Volume 1
Joyful Company of Singers, Ascolta/Peter Broadbent
Finchley Children’s Music Group/Grace Rossiter
Gavin Roberts, John Evans (piano)
rec. 2021/2022, St. Jude on the Hill, London, UK; St. Silas, Kentish Town London, UK
Toccata Classics TOCC0395 [71]
This is an exemplary release by Toccata Classics. Well recorded, sensitively performed, superbly documented [full texts included in English only], the listener is given mainly premiere recordings of unknown repertoire that throws a fascinating new light on the output of an intriguing and often elusive composer.
Havergal Brian is much less of a ‘forgotten’ composer than was the case even twenty years ago. But as the brilliant and insightful John Pickard writes in his model liner note, his relative fame is based on his thirty two numbered symphonies of which twenty one were written after his 80th birthday. Over the years Toccata have explored other aspects of Brian’s output including songs, opera and non-symphonic orchestral music. Now we get volume one of “The Complete Choral Songs”. According to Pickard Brian wrote at least eighty works for various combinations of voices, accompanied and a capella, unison or in multiple parts. The bulk of these come from three phases of Brian’s life; around 1905-06 (when he was nearly 30 years old), then the years spanning either side of World War I (which just pre-dates his starting on the mighty Gothic Symphony) and finally a group of a dozen or so settings from the 1920’s and 1930’s.
This new collection features thirty settings of which twenty six are simply “first recordings” while the remaining four are “first digital recordings”. It should be noted however that the only previous recordings featured on a mid-1970’s Altarus LP performed by the Stoke on Trent Bedford singers which the Havergal Brian website marks as deleted. So for all intents and purposes this new disc becomes the reference recording for these works. This is not a question of discovering major masterpieces but then I do not think they were written with that intention. Only two of the songs approach the 5:00 mark, nearly half run between 2:00 – 3:00 while another twelve are sub 2:00. The musical aspect of pretty much all of these songs that will strike the listener accustomed to Brian’s knotty, complex and often elusive style is just how simple and direct most of these scores are. In main that is simply down to the purpose of the works. As Pickard points out the early songs were written for and under the influence of the English Choral Festival tradition that inspired (funded?) many British composers from the last decades of the 19th Century up to the outbreak of World War I. Not only was the actual musical standard high, but the number and quality of choirs gave composers the opportunity to have their music performed as well as accrue the fees that would go with commissions and performances.
The first track on this disc; Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day is just such a work. Elgar recommended this setting for the 1905 Morecombe Festival and such was its success that it became the official test-piece for the following year. Pickard refers to this work’s “melodious freshness and harmonic unpredictability offering challenge and reward in equal measure”. That would be equally applicable to the majority of the songs here which sound grateful and rewarding to sing without insurmountable complexities. A significant part of the success of this disc is that three different but skilled choral groups have been used and the works have been cunningly ordered to provide variation in performance but continuity of theme or author. Conductor Peter Broadbent directs both the Joyful Company of Singers and Ascolta in a total of nineteen songs while Grace Rossiter directs the Finchley Children’s Music Group in the remaining eleven. All of the latter are accompanied with great sensitivity and clarity by John Evanson. Gavin Roberts performs a similar role equally skilfully in nine of the Peter Broadbent directed works with one more accompanied by flute and harp. There is one typo on the back cover where Roberts’ contribution to Violets [track 6] is omitted but the listing implies that both choirs sing this work which I am sure they do not. In the booklet the confusion is compounded by assigning the work to Ascolta alone but still not listing the pianist. The remaining nine settings are unaccompanied.
Pickard suggests that the settings from around the War are mainly for women’s or children’s voices to reflect the literal absence of men from choirs at the time. The settings sung by the Finchley Children’s Music Group are genuinely delightful. They are clearly well-trained but they have a collectively fresh and unmannered quality that suits the style of Brian’s settings. Pickard rightly singles out Grace for a Child [track 8] as “perhaps the simplest thing Brian ever composed”. As sung here there is touching beauty and lack of artifice in that simplicity. The Joyful Company of Singers are a good ensemble too although not quite as perfectly balanced or close-knit in ensemble terms as the very finest choirs. But that said when Brian’s writing becomes more demanding as in the powerful setting of Come Away Death [track 15] – a rare male voice setting – they are clearly impressive. As are Ascolta in the equally compelling setting of Full Fathom Five [track 14]. Along with the later Four Choral Songs from Prometheus Unbound [tracks 23-26] these are settings which are most recognisably Brian in the sense that listeners familiar with his symphonies will relate. Frustratingly, Pickard mentions that there are nine further settings from around the early 1920’s where the titles have survived but the music itself is lost. The same is true of Brian’s massive setting of Prometheus Unbound which dwarfs even his Gothic Symphony in terms of scale and performing demands. The full score is again lost but the four settings for semi-chorus included here are another tantalising glimpse at the “fearsome challenge” they present to unaccompanied voices. Credit to the Joyful Company that they succeed as well as they do.
Brian’s composing career was in no small part shaped by the fact that he had to work and earn a wage. Not for him the comparative luxury of private wealth and income that benefitted contemporaries such as Bax, Delius or Vaughan Williams. As such it can be understood that possibly the writing of accessible part songs for the use by amateur choirs might well provide an income stream. Unlike composers such as John Foulds, Brian never embraced the earning opportunities of the burgeoning light music field – although when you hear some of these settings as well as his earlier orchestral suites you realise he did have the compositional capacity to write in a ‘popular’ style should he have so wished. Curious then that Pickard writes that although all these choral settings were published there is little if any evidence of them being performed. Which he suggests means that not only are these premiere recordings but possibly first actual performances. Given the attractiveness of so many of these works I do find that quite hard to believe but I bow to the greater knowledge of experts such as Pickard.
The value of this collection is in emphasising the range and variety of Brian’s output. The salutary fact that he went from being a valued composer of note around the turn of the 20th century to a marginalised and impoverished eccentric by his death is underlined by this release. Clearly this has been a project sometime in the making with three sets of sessions and two venues – as well as the three choirs – dating back to 2021. The production team of engineer/editor Adaq Khan and producer Micheal Ponder have done an excellent job of ensuring consistency of sound production across the different session dates and locations. Toccata Classics supported by the indefatigable Havergal Brian Society are to be warmly praised for great service provided by this excellent and illuminating collection. The expectation must be that volume two will be every bit as valuable and interesting.
Nick Barnard
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Contents
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day
Soul Star
Come o’er the sea
Lullaby of an Infant Chief
Ah! County Guy, Serenade for equal voices
Violets
Fair Pledges of a Fruitful Tree
Grace for a Child
A Song of the Willow
And will he not come again?
Ye spotted snakes
Fear no more the heat of the sun
Under the Greenwood tree
Full fathom five
Come away, death
The Blossom
The Fly
The Little Boy Lost
The Little Boy Found
Piping down the Valleys Wild
The Chimney Sweeper
The Little Black Boy
Prometheus Unbound
– From Unremembered Ages
– The Path
– There the Voluptuous Nightingales
– There those Enchanted Eddies
Spring – sound the flute
Summer has come, Little Children
Goodbye to Summer
