Prom 4: Brian - The Gothic Symphony

This listing is in the past

Royal Albert HallKensington Gore, London, Greater London, SW7 2AP, United Kingdom

Dates/times in London time zone

Programme

Brian, Havergal (1876-1972)

Performers

Susan Gritton	Soprano
Christine Rice	Mezzo-soprano
Peter Auty	Tenor
Alastair Miles	Bass
CBSO Youth Chorus
The Choir of Eltham College
Southend Boys' and Girls' Choirs
The Bach Choir
BBC National Chorus of Wales
Brighton Festival Chorus
Côr Caerdydd
Huddersfield Choral Society
London Symphony Chorus
BBC Concert Orchestra
BBC National Orchestra of Wales
Martyn Brabbins	Conductor

This season’s sequence of Choral Sundays kicks off with arguably the grandest statement in British music, Havergal Brian’s ‘The Gothic’, a gargantuan work that earned an entry in the Guinness Book of Records under ‘Longest Symphony’.

Completed in the 1920s but unplayed until 1961, its most famous outing came in 1966, when Sir Adrian Boult presided over a BBC-sponsored rendition at the Royal Albert Hall. Its Proms debut features not one but two orchestras and a raft of choirs. Even Mahler never contemplated a work on quite this scale, although he too found inspiration in Goethe’s Faust.

Map

Havergal Brian's monumental Gothic Symphony

Andrew Benson-Wilson, 21st July

A work scheduled to last nearly two hours could be excused for starting with a long slow build up, but Havergal Brian’s massive Gothic Symphony (the longest symphony ever composed) bursts onto the scene with a brisk and bustling march-like flourish, contrasted briefly with a delicate violin solo that reminds us that this is very much an English composition.

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