Death
On 1 September 1957, 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. He had driven his Triumph TR2 sports car off the road and into a tree on the A1 road opposite the north gate of De Havilland Aircraft factory at Hatfield. He was scheduled for a recording session of Strauss's Capriccio with the conductor Wolfgang Sawallisch the next morning in London. Brain was a noted enthusiast of fast cars and was known for keeping Autocar magazine on his stand as he played the Mozart concertos from memory during recording sessions. He was 36 years old at the time of his death. Brain was interred at Hampstead Cemetery in London.
His headstone is engraved with a passage from Hindemith's Declamation section from his Horn Concerto.:
My call transforms
The hall to autumn-tinted groves
What is into what
Has been....
His B-flat/A model 90 horn made by Alexander Brothers in Mainz, Germany, and later modified, 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 Royal Academy of Music, London.
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