Twenty-some years ago (close to thirty-some) recordings of Havergal
Brian's symphonies were scarcer than the proverbial hen's dentures.
Suddenly, a spate of LPs, containing at least half a dozen of the
symphonies and his violin concerto appeared on the Aries label. The
performers were listed as "San Paulo Symphony conducted by Francisco
Theatro" (actually Stanley Pope conducting the New Philharmonia & John
Canarina conducting the BBCSO), "Wales Symphony conducted by Colin
Wilson" (Myer Fredman conducting the Royal PO & Edward Downes conducting
the London SO), and Hamburg Philharmonic conducted by Horst Werner (New
Philharmonia Orch conducted by Stokowski (!) & Stanley Pope again -
Ralph Holmes was given the pseudonym Emil Liebowitz for his solo work in
the violin concerto). Strangely enough, the recording of his infamously
gigantic "Gothic" symphony (no. 1) actually was able to give Adrian
Boult cover credit (I don't know if there was some arrangement or they
just thought that there was no point in making up stories about who was
on a recording of a work that had only be played once at that point
(there is a now a subsequent CD of it on Marco Polo). There were
definitely recordings of a few other cult favorites (Robert Simpson,
maybe - my LPs are not arranged by label, so I am relying on shaky memory).
Anyhow, wholesale shameless theft of the highest order and most
enjoyable music, mostly well-played by the phantom artists.
Peter Hirsch
David Lennick wrote:
Anyone remember the Aries label, around 1980? It put out all sorts of
pirated goodies, including several symphonies by George Lloyd which
were swiped from BBC transcriptions and given real-sounding names,
including one belonging to the guy who exposed the whole mess for High
Fidelity in '81.
Ernst Lumpe, who unfortunately got sucked into the Hatto mess, has
written for a number of years on identifying some of the pseudonymous
labels such as Allegro.
dl