New Russia State Symphony Orchestra - Havergal Brian: Symphonies Nos. 6, 28, 29 & 31 (2015)

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.

Naxos continues its exploration of the sequence of symphonies by English composer Havergal Brian with four more examples. The earliest is the Sixth, written when he was 72, but Nos. 28, 29 and 31 are late works, full of his characteristic qualities of individuality and powerful gestures. One of his most intermittently savage symphonies, No.28, is balanced by his most lyrical late work in the genre, No.29.