Dennis Brain
Template:Short description Template:Use dmy dates Template:Use British English
Dennis Brain (17 May 1921Template:Spaced ndash1 September 1957) was a British horn player. From a musical family – his father and grandfather were horn players – he attended the Royal Academy of Music in London. During the Second World War he served in the Royal Air Force, playing in its band and orchestra. After the war, he was the principal horn of the Philharmonia and Royal Philharmonic orchestras, and played in chamber ensembles.
Among the works written for Brain is Benjamin Britten's Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings (1944). Other composers who wrote for him include Malcolm Arnold, Lennox Berkeley, Alan Bush, Gordon Jacob, Humphrey Searle and Mátyás Seiber.
Brain was killed in a car crash at the age of 36.
Life and careerEdit
Early yearsEdit
Brain was born in Hammersmith, London on 17 May 1921 to a musical family. His mother, Marion, née Beeley (1887–1954), was a singer at Covent Garden and his father, Aubrey Harold Brain, was first horn of the London Symphony Orchestra and regarded as "the leading exponent of the instrument in Britain at that time".<ref name=odnb/> Aubrey's father, Alfred Edwin Brain, Sr., and elder brother, Alfred Edwin Brain Jr., had been prominent horn players in Britain, and in the latter's case the US.Template:Refn Brain's elder brother, Leonard (1915–1975), became a leading player of the oboe and cor anglais,<ref name=g1>Gamble and Lynch, p. 1</ref> principal of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.<ref>Waymark Peter. "Celebration to mark RPO's first concert", The Times, 15 September 1971, p. 17</ref> Brain was educated at Richmond Hill Preparatory School and then St Paul's School, London.<ref>Gamble and Lynch, p. 2</ref> Although it was assumed that he would become a horn player, his father kept him largely away from the instrument as a boy, in the belief that it should not be played until the adult teeth developed. Brain was allowed to blow a few notes on his father's horn every Saturday morning, to maintain his interest, but his first musical studies were piano and organ.<ref name=g1/>
In 1936 Brain was admitted to the Royal Academy of Music (RAM) to study horn under his father, who was a professor of the instrument there. He also studied piano with Max Pirani, organ with G. D. Cunningham and harmony with Montague Phillips.<ref>Gamble and Lynch, pp. 3 and 6</ref> His professional début was on 6 October 1938 when he played in Bach's Brandenburg Concerto no. 1 (which features two concertante horn parts) as second horn to his father in the Queen's Hall, London, under the baton of Adolf Busch. The music critic of The Daily Telegraph wrote: Template:Blockindent The following month Brain and his brother were soloists in a concert featuring Mozart's Horn Quintet (K. 407) and Oboe Quintet (K. 370).<ref>"Recitals of the Week", The Times, 4 November 1938, p. 12</ref> He appeared with ensembles including the Griller and Busch quartets and made broadcasts for the BBC, the first of which, in February 1939, featured Mozart's Divertimento in D (K334) with Aubrey as first horn and Dennis as second.<ref>"Tuesday National" Template:Webarchive, Radio Times, 26 February 1939, p. 38</ref> In the same month father and son recorded the work for Columbia with the Léner Quartet.<ref name=legge>Legge, Walter. "Dennis Brain" Template:Webarchive, The Gramophone, November 1957. Retrieved 12 June 2021</ref>
RAF and wartimeEdit
At the start of the Second World War Brain and his brother joined the armed forces. Unlike Germany and Italy, Britain did not exempt musicians from conscription, but the conductor of the Central Band of the Royal Air Force, Wing Commander Rudolph O'Donnell, made considerable, and largely successful, efforts to ensure that, as Walter Legge put it, "every exceptionally able young instrumentalist knew that a place would be found for him in the RAF Band".<ref name=legge/> The band became what The Independent described as "a legendary ensemble",<ref>"Obituary: Cecil James" Template:Webarchive, The Independent, 23 October 2011</ref> and an RAF Symphony Orchestra was a spin-off. With them, Brain made a three-month tour of the US in 1944–45, and played during the Potsdam Conference in 1945.<ref name=odnb/>
Players in the RAF ensemble were allowed to perform for civilian managements when not required for official duties. Brain made 26 solo appearances in the wartime National Gallery concerts organised by Myra Hess, in a range of works including the Mozart Horn Quintet (K407) and the Brahms Trio for Horn, Violin and Piano (Op. 40), which became, as his biographer Tim Barringer writes, "his signature works in later years".<ref name=odnb>Barringer, Tim. "Brain, Dennis (1921–1957)" Template:Webarchive, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2011. Retrieved 12 June 2021 Template:ODNBsub</ref> For the BBC he made more than 20 broadcasts during the war for the home or forces networks, mostly of chamber music, but on one occasion playing the Mozart Horn Concerto K495 with the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Adrian Boult.<ref>"Dennis Brain" Template:Webarchive, BBC Genome; and "BBC Orchestra" Template:Webarchive, Radio Times, 13 September 1942, p. 14. Retrieved 12 June 2021</ref>
In mid-1942 Brain met the composer Benjamin Britten; the latter was writing incidental music, played by the RAF orchestra, for a series of BBC radio commentaries on war-time Britain which were being broadcast weekly to the US. Britten immediately recognised Brain's exceptional skill, and took little persuading to write a concert work for him. This was the Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings,<ref name="bb"/> premiered at the Wigmore Hall in October 1944 with Brain and Peter Pears as soloists.<ref name=gs>Lewis, Geraint. "Britten's Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings", Gramophone, October 2020, pp. 94–97</ref> Britten acknowledged Brain's help during the composition of the work: Template:Blockindent
Later yearsEdit
By 1945, Brain, at 24 years of age, was the most sought-after horn player in England.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> His father injured himself in a fall, and retired from the BBC Symphony Orchestra, although he remained professor at the RAM until his death ten years later.<ref name=grove>Morley-Pegge, Reginald, and Niall O'Loughlin. "Brain family", Grove Music Online, Oxford University Press, 2001. Retrieved 14 June 2021 Template:Subscription required Template:Webarchive</ref> After the war, Legge and Sir Thomas Beecham founded the Philharmonia and the Royal Philharmonic orchestras, respectively.<ref name=legge/> Brain was principal horn in both, playing for Beecham alongside the woodwind players dubbed "the Royal Family" – Jack Brymer (clarinet), Gwydion Brooke (bassoon), Terence MacDonagh (oboe), and Gerald Jackson (flute).<ref>Melville-Mason, Graham. "Gwydion Brooke – Bassoonist in Sir Thomas Beecham's 'Royal Family'" Template:Webarchive, The Independent, 5 April 2005</ref> Later, he found that he did not have enough time to fill both positions and resigned from the Royal Philharmonic.<ref name=odnb/>
Brain originally played a French instrument, a Raoux piston-valve horn, similar to that used by his father.<ref>Gamble and Lynch, p. 190</ref> This type of instrument has a particularly fluid tone and a fine legato, but a less robust sound than the German-made instruments which were becoming common. In 1951 he switched to an Alexander single BTemplate:Music instrument. It had a custom lead pipe which was narrower than the usual, and offered a sound which, if not comparable to the Raoux, at least gave a nod in the direction of the lighter French instrument.<ref>Gamble and Lynch, pp. 189 and 195–198</ref>
Pursuing his interest in chamber music, Brain formed a wind quintet with his brother in 1946.<ref name="odnb" /> He also established a trio with the pianist Wilfrid Parry and violinist Jean Pougnet.<ref>Gamble and Lynch, pp. 219–220</ref> Briefly, Brain put together a chamber ensemble consisting of his friends so that he could conduct.<ref>Gamble and Lynch, p. 45</ref> From 1945 he played with Karl Haas's London Baroque Ensemble, both on recordings and in concert.<ref>Gamble and Lynch, p. 18</ref> Showing his humorous style, Brain performed a Leopold Mozart horn concerto on a rubber hose pipe at a Gerard Hoffnung music festival in 1956, trimming the hose with garden shears to achieve the correct tuning.<ref>Gamble and Lynch, p. 232</ref>
In November 1953, under the direction of Herbert von Karajan, and accompanied by the Philharmonia, Brain recorded the four Mozart Horn Concertos for Columbia.<ref name=naxos>Notes to Naxos Historical CD set 8.111070 Template:Oclc</ref> In the same month, together with Sidney Sutcliffe (oboe), Bernard Walton (clarinet) and Cecil James (bassoon), he recorded Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante for Four Winds.<ref>Schwarzkopf, p. 271</ref> In July 1954, again conducted by Karajan, Brain played the organ part in a recording of the Easter hymn from Pietro Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana.<ref name=g83>Gamble and Lynch, p. 83</ref> With Sutcliffe, Walton, James and the pianist Walter Gieseking he recorded Mozart's Quintet for Piano and Winds, K452, in April 1955.<ref name=naxos/> Of Brain's other recordings, Legge singled out his playing in the four Brahms Symphonies conducted by Otto Klemperer, Mozart's B flat Divertimento with Karajan and Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier, "the horn-player's opera par excellence!"<ref name=legge/> [[File:Dennis-brain-alex.jpg|thumb|right|Brain's Alexander [[French horn#Single horn|BTemplate:Music/A model 90 horn]], damaged in the crash, restored by Paxman and now on display at the Royal Academy of Music ]]
Brain was a keen motorist. His brother called him "the finest driver I have ever ridden with". Barringer writes that Brain bought Template:Blockindent On 1 September 1957, at the age of 36, Brain was killed driving home to London after performing the Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 6, Pathetique with the Philharmonia under Eugene Ormandy at the Edinburgh Festival.<ref>Gamble and Lynch, p. 221</ref> He had driven his Triumph TR2 sports car off the road and into a tree on the A1 road opposite the north gate of the De Havilland Aircraft factory at Hatfield.
Brain was interred at Hampstead Cemetery in London. His headstone is engraved with a passage from the "Declamation" section of Hindemith's Horn Concerto: <poem>
My call transforms
The hall to autumn-tinted groves
What is into what
Has been...<ref name=foreman>Foreman, p. 114</ref></poem>
One of Brain's favourite horns (by Alexander of Mainz: a single B-flat horn with an F extension as a tuning slide) was badly damaged in his fatal crash. It has since been restored by Paxman Brothers of London and is on public display in the York Gate Collections at the RAM.<ref>"Horn by Gebrüder Alexander, c.1950. Owned and played by Dennis Brain" Template:Webarchive, Royal Academy of Music. Retrieved 14 June 2021</ref>
New works and commemorationsEdit
As well as the Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings, Britten wrote Canticle III: Still falls the rain with Brain in mind; Brain and Pears, accompanied by the composer, gave the first performance at a concert in 1955 in which Brain also premiered two pieces by Alan Bush.<ref>"A Memorial Concert", The Times, 29 January 1955, p. 8</ref> Other composers who wrote for Brain were Malcolm Arnold (Horn Concerto No. 2),<ref name=to>"Mr Dennis Brain: A Renowned Horn Player", The Times, 2 September 1957, p. 10</ref> Lennox Berkeley (Trio for Horn, Violin and Piano),<ref>Redding, Joan, and Peter Dickinson. "Berkeley, Sir Lennox", Grove Music Online, Oxford University Press, 2001. Retrieved 14 June 2021 Template:Subscription required Template:Webarchive</ref> York Bowen (Concerto for Horn, Strings and Timpani),<ref>Gamble and Lynch, p. 177</ref> Hindemith (Concerto for Horn and Orchestra),<ref>Meucci, Renato, and Gabriele Rocchetti. "Horn", Grove Music Online, Oxford University Press, 2001. Retrieved 14 June 2021 Template:Subscription required Template:Webarchive</ref> Gordon Jacob (Concerto for Horn and String Orchestra),<ref name="dm" /> Elisabeth Lutyens (Horn Concerto),<ref name="dm">Mitchell, Donald. "Dennis Brain" Template:Webarchive, Tempo, New Series, no. 45 (1957), pp. 16–17. Retrieved 14 June 2021</ref> Humphrey Searle (Aubade for Horn and Strings),<ref>Gamble and Lynch, p. 186</ref> Mátyás Seiber (Notturno for Horn and Strings),<ref>Gamble and Lynch, p. 173</ref> and Ernest Tomlinson (Rhapsody and Rondo for Horn and Orchestra, Romance and Rondo for Horn and Orchestra).<ref>Gamble and Lynch, p. 180</ref>
Francis Poulenc wrote Élégie for Horn and Piano to commemorate Brain's death. It was premiered by the BBC in a broadcast on 17 February 1958, played by Neill Sanders with Poulenc at the piano.<ref>"Poulenc's Elegy for Dennis Brain", The Times, 8 February 1958, p. 3</ref>
In its obituary notice, The Times said of Brain: Template:Blockindent
Notes, references and sourcesEdit
NotesEdit
ReferencesEdit
SourcesEdit
External linksEdit
- Concertonet.com, Instruments of Mass Seduction II: The Horn; 11 May 2004
- Marshall, Robert L. Dennis Brain on Record: A Comprehensive Discography of his Solo, Chamber and Orchestral Recordings. Newton, MA: Margun Music, Inc. 1996. An updated version of this discography can be downloaded at: Dennis Brain (1921-1957) - IHS Online Template:Webarchive
- William C. Lynch Dennis Brain Collection (ARS.0138), Stanford Archive of Recorded Sound
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