Let ‘Gothic’ Be Heard

Let me add another heartfelt vote to novelist Alan Dean Foster’s for Havergal Brian’s “Gothic” symphony as an impressive choice with which to open Disney Hall (Letters, March 17).

When the one CD recording of the piece was issued on the Marco Polo label, the New York Times’ Living Arts section was shocked to discover that this unknown composer had created an out-and-out masterpiece. It was recommended weekly for six weeks.

As someone who writes for film, TV and the musical stage, I can tell you there is more than one Hollywood film composer who has not hesitated to borrow from Brian’s orchestration.

But I fear that Foster’s well-meant suggestion will fall on the same deaf ears that greeted my letter to the Philharmonic’s Esa-Pekka Salonen, Ernest Fleischmann and Deborah Borda proposing a “Gothic” performance not even for the grand opening, but perhaps later in the initial Disney Hall season.

Mr. Fleischmann replied that he would under no circumstances program an “elephantine” piece by an “amateur” composer who wrote 32 “elephantine” symphonies.

That the other 31 Brian symphonies are less than half an hour in playing time suggests that there is not merely a lack of knowledge at the highest levels of the musical establishment, but a hidebound refusal to be open-minded.

As my disparaging college music professor said to me back in 1959 regarding the then-unknown Gustav Mahler: “That derivative, post-Wagnerian no-talent?”

LARRY ALEXANDER

Sherman Oaks