The Fantastic Variations (the ‘Old Rhyme’ on which they are based is Three Blind Mice) are early Brian, exuberant music written when he had only just turned 30, but although Symphony No. 20 dates from over 55 years later it is not so much a late work as one of his ‘middle period’, when he was still experimenting and developing. Only Symphony No. 25, completed just before his ninetieth birthday in 1966, really counts as ‘late’ Brian, or rather as ‘early late’, since in the next three years he was to write a further seven symphonies.
The Variations are hugely resourceful, already fantastic before the theme has even been properly stated. Perhaps that was the idea: to choose a theme so simple and universally well known that no time needs wasting on ‘exposition’. Of course Brian is showing off his orchestral mastery, the range of grotesque, bizarre and troubling ideas that he can draw from such an unpromising theme, but only once or twice do you get the feeling that the contrast between material and treatment is getting a little extreme.
The two symphonies are descendants of the Variations in their ingenuity of thematic development. Both are intensely dramatic, but their drama is never mere gesture; both are impressive in their long-term strategy, the way that themes are recalled by subtle allusion instead of mere recurrence. Symphony No. 25 is a fine example of this, sowing a new and beautiful melody in the midst of the first movement’s development, but only revealing that melody in its full form at the end, where it becomes an obvious, satisfying and moving conclusion. In the slow movement a lyrical idea repeatedly returns, taking on a different emotional colour from the various stages of a tense context, emerging into eloquent nobility in the closing pages. No. 20 is a bit harder to read, but no less rewarding once you recognize that, for example, in the finale much is made of contrast between a spiky opening idea and a much more gracious lyrical one that are to all intents and purposes identical, and there is something of sly wit to Brian’s demonstration of the fact.
Once or twice the Ukrainian players sound a bit baffled by the idiom once or twice, with a hint of raised eyebrows in the Variations, but they clearly believe in the Symphony No. 25, the finest work here, and give it an absorbing, vivid reading. There is a touch of rawness to the sound at times, but Andrew Penny is alert to the often striking, often surprising colours of Brian’s orchestra.'