Some of the most exhilarating experiences of my recent country life have taken place to a background of dramatically purging music...
Some of the most exhilarating experiences of my recent country life have taken place to a background of dramatically purging music. The shed on the edge of my field allows sufficient distance from neighbours to grant me the privilege of listening to deafening music without ‘disturbing’ any of them. So emotionally rousing have I found the sophisticated symphonies of Havergal Brian (1876-1972) that I have taken some criticism of him rather personally. Writing in the Critic magazine, Norman Lebrecht declares Brian a ‘sticky case... Some composers are rightly obscure. There is a place for marginal composers – it’s on the margins,’ he sneers. Yet Brian fans are campaigning for 2026, his sesquicentenary, to be the year when the Proms season 2026 should forget about ‘grooving’ and instead promote England’s first self-taught, working-class symphonist, whose oeuvre was admired by Richard Strauss. And for those readers who think that by the age...
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