Brian: Symphonies Nos. 6, 28, 29 & 31
New Russia State Symphony Orchestra, Alexander Walker
My expectations of high performance quality were fully met by these gripping accounts. Walker achieves extraordinarily intense playing that illuminates this music to its best advantage.
Brian: Symphonies Nos. 6, 28, 29 & 31
New Russia State Symphony Orchestra, Alexander Walker
Purchase product
My expectations of high performance quality were fully met by these gripping accounts. Walker achieves extraordinarily intense playing that illuminates this music to its best advantage.
About
Havergal Brian’s extraordinary late creativity is almost unparalleled in musical history. Between the completion of Symphony No. 6 in 1948 and the end of his compositional life two decades later he wrote 26 symphonies. No. 6 marks a crucial point in his adoption of more concise forms and economy of expression in its single-movement span, a process taken even further in the brief but free polyphonic fantasia of No. 31. In Symphonies Nos. 28 and 29 Brian turned to the classical four-movement model but one which is wholly and idiosyncratically re-imagined. The intensity and even savagery of No. 28 is balanced by No. 29, Brian’s most lyrical late work.
Contents and tracklist
- New Russia State Symphony Orchestra
- Alexander Walker
- Recorded: 20-24 May 2014
- Recording Venue: Studio 5, Russian State TV & Radio Company KULTURA, Moscow, Russia
- New Russia State Symphony Orchestra
- Alexander Walker
- Recorded: 20-24 May 2014
- Recording Venue: Studio 5, Russian State TV & Radio Company KULTURA, Moscow, Russia
- New Russia State Symphony Orchestra
- Alexander Walker
- Recorded: 20-24 May 2014
- Recording Venue: Studio 5, Russian State TV & Radio Company KULTURA, Moscow, Russia
- New Russia State Symphony Orchestra
- Alexander Walker
- Recorded: 20-24 May 2014
- Recording Venue: Studio 5, Russian State TV & Radio Company KULTURA, Moscow, Russia
Awards and reviews
May 2015
My expectations of high performance quality were fully met by these gripping accounts. Walker achieves extraordinarily intense playing that illuminates this music to its best advantage.
Classical CD Review February 2019
No surprise, but the best performance on this CD is of the Sixth, the work with the most extensive performing and recording tradition.