Charles ll wrote of his niece Anne’s (later Queen Anne) husband, Prince George of Denmark, “I’ve tried him drunk and I’ve tried him sober and there’s nothing in him”. Well, I’ve tried Havergal Brian’s Gothic Symphony stone cold sober and after a couple of not-so-wee drams and I still can’t get a handle on it.

This sprawling, amorphous behemoth has long been a cult work even among people who’ve never heard it (just about everybody). Attempting to do this work justice in a normal review is
a bit like trying to inscribe The Bible on the head of a pin. The first three purely orchestral movements – supposedly connected to the Faust legend – are quite impressive in a guess-the-composer way, with their exciting thrust, especially the manic xylophone solo (rather like the demented organ solo at the end of Janácek’s Glagolitic Mass) although I was never aware of the Guinness World Record-breaking statistics of the orchestral forces involved. There’s none of the sense of heft as there is in, say, Mahler’s Eighth. It’s in the second section – what must be the largest, longest setting of the Te Deum in existence – that things start to unravel. The choral movements display such a vast range of musical styles that they become essentially meaningless. I spent more time trying to determine what it reminded me of: Messiaen’s Turangalîla Symphony? Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder?

How conductor Martyn Brabbins keeps this show on the road – it was recorded at last year’s London Proms – and maintains the quality and ensemble of the huge forces, are the most impressive aspects of the whole release.