Picking up on Tapiola's comment in the Finnish Downloads discussion.............. I've decided to gird my loins, grasp the nettle, and stand up and be counted! I confess .............. I really don't care much for Havergal Brian's Symphonies! 
Yes, I know that many of you good people, including Dundonnell, Herrenberg, and many others, adore his work, but I trust you won't send me to Coventry for this quirk in my musical sensibilities! Before anyone starts trying to tell me what I'm missing, I should point out that I have all the symphonies, and have been patiently listening to them on-and-off for 40 years, thinking that one day I might understand what it is that holds his fans in thrall, but without success. I've listened to the Gothic many times and it's OK but it doesn't really do much for me. I don't dislike it, you understand, and I am delighted that HB has his champions and dismayed by his neglect, but his music doesn't talk to me, doesn't move me in any significant way. (So, I was far more moved by Colin's wonderful account of his son's encounter with HB' music, than I have ever been by the music itself!)
I don't want to spark a 'for and against' argument here - I just wanted to reassure others with a similar view that they are not alone! As we've agreed so many times before - musical taste is amazingly diverse and long may it be so!
Colin(Semloh), just for clarification
It was my greatnephew that I took to hear the Proms Gothic not "my son"-I don't have one of those
Those who think that Havergal Brian is receiving a measure of extravagent attention should stay well clear of that other music forum GMG where the HB thread has now reached 190 pages and 3,799 replies
Mind you it does tend to veer off on all manner of extraordinary tangents
As Albion has so well put it, Brian is, for me too, a wonderfully unpredictable and fascinating composer and always has been. I share Alan's belief that the Proms Gothic was the most wonderful experience of my concert-going life. Brian certainly fully merits the exposure which is music is again enjoying, following the earlier 1970s broadcasts of the entire symphonic series.
But....yes, there is a 'but'...the later symphonies can be hard nuts to crack. I do "enjoy" the earlier symphonies more, particularly Nos. 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10.
I hope that I will give no offence by saying that the advocacy of Brian's music was sometimes in the past open to the charge that those who appeared fanatical about it had been seduced by the aura of "the old man" composing all those symphonies in an isolation which was far from 'splendid':
Brian contra mundum. This inevitably led some critics to react in a hostile way to the music and many of them still do. In reality, I sometimes think, the adverse reaction is not informed by actually listening to and studying the music-as
semloh obviously has-but by a determination not to give ground to those 'amateurs' who dared to challenge the established view. Thus the perception of people like Andrew Clements that, essentially, Brian-lovers are cranks.
Nor does it help when-and I suppose that there is an inevitability in this-people set composer against composer. As I have said many times before, I winced in surprise, pain and, yes, anger when I read in Malcolm's Volume II his disparaging comments on the "Cheltenham Symphonists". I will continue to champion Brian's music but never, I hope, at the expense of equally championing the music of a composer like Edmund Rubbra, whose symphonies touch a deep spiritual chord in me.
