Well clearly this whole writing an entry every day business has gone and failed hard. So in an effort to catch back up this entry and the next entry will be on a composer I find kind of interesting, Havergal Brian. He was a prolific symphony writer in the 20th century and most of his writing was done in his seventies to nineties. Also peculiar is that his first symphony, the Gothic, is a MASSIVE nearly two hour long work (which I will get to someday, but it is exhausting listening to it), but many of his later symphonies are very succinct.
This is a very distilled symphony due to its brief two movement form. That doesn't prevent Brian from going through a large variety of ideas in each movement though, it just means that the results are turbulent and can shift to completely different affects on a whim. The counterpoint can be quite complex at times in both movements, and there is an uncomfortable energy permeating the first. There are periods of stillness and relative harmonic simplicity that are suddenly punctuated by grotesque dissonances, especially in the second movement, which is marked as a march. The end of the first movement ends suddenly, while the second ends in an almost comically obvious yet still unusual 5-6-7-8 in the melodic voice.
Shorter Version: There is definitely enough of interest in here to spend the whole less than 10 minutes it takes to listen to it.
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