BAX: Symphony No. 1 / In the Faery Hills / Garden of Fand

Drawn from David Lloyd-Jones' excellent set of Bax symphony recordings, this collection competes in four out of five works with Bryden Thomson and the Ulster Orchestra on Chandos. Whereas Thomson has Summer Music, Lloyd-Jones offers The Tale the Pine Trees Knew, a more interesting and substantial work. In general this Naxos issue offers tauter, livelier performances than does Thomson, and this prevents the music from degenerating into a typically shapeless Baxian blob, as it has a tendency to do, particularly November Woods and The Garden of Fand. Lloyd-Jones also has the finer orchestra and a leaner basic sonority, less atmospheric than Thomson to be sure, but with a rhythmic crispness that puts a bit more muscle and sinew on Bax's opulent textures (check out Tintagel, which delivers a real rush of excitement in its central section). The engineering complements the performances, having fine clarity and impact. If you're in the market for a single disc of Bax tone poems, or even a single disc of Bax, then this one certainly fills the bill. [7/25/2005]--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Arnold Bax's chamber music has been largely overshadowed today by his newly popular orchestral works, and in some instances, such as the first of his eminently fine string quartets, all but forgotten. Quartet No. 1 draws deeply on the grand quartet heritage of the 19th century, most notably Dvorák, whose Quartet No. 11 sounds to have been a model for Bax, so similar are their opening themes (not to mention Bax's use of a pentatonic scale in the secondary material). The central slow movement prefigures Bax's later luxuriantly atmospheric style with its languorous main theme supported by his trademark descending chromatic counterpoint. The finale, a self-styled jig on a popular Irish tune, brings the work to an upbeat and bright conclusion.


Quartet No. 2 is a tougher nut, and thus did not achieve the initial popularity of its predecessor. The opening movement's angular contortions give way to secondary material of a more lyrical stripe; however, it's not until the second movement that you find the expected Baxian lushness--and even here you can't get too comfortable, for sharp edges lurk in the shadows. A determined optimism characterizes the hard-dancing finale, which features two fugato passages before ending in a brilliant coda. Both quartets are important contributions to the repertoire, something made abundantly clear by the Maggini Quartet's masterful, deeply felt, and finely executed readings. The ensemble's burning conviction will make you a believer too, especially in this beautifully engineered production from Naxos.
--Victor Carr Jr., ClassicsToday.com

BAX: String Quartet No. 3 / Lyrical Interlude

Ah, such pleasing, dreamy music! You can almost see fluffy, feathery clouds drifting across a bright blue sky looking down on a lily-covered pasture. Picturesque? You bet. This is atmospheric music, pure and simple. Beauty of sound is given such a priority that concerns of form and structure seem irrelevant, though it's readily apparent that the four-movement Fantasy Sonata for harp and viola is a most substantial and seriously crafted work. The Sonata for flute and harp unavoidably conjures up images of Pan, while the Quintet, with its briefly dark and disturbing moments, shows evidence of having been composed in the wake of the First World War. However, it is the Elegiac Trio that presents Bax's real response to those events, particularly the death of his friend, Irish poet Padraig Pearse. Yet, there is no rage in this music; on the contrary, it inhabits a similar sound world to Debussy's Sonata for Flute, Viola, and Harp, which was composed six months earlier. Throughout all these works, Alison Nicholls draws exquisitely beautiful sounds from her harp, playing with the imagination so essential to the music's expressive character. She is handsomely partnered by Mobius, an ensemble of seven young musicians from four different countries. Their commitment and enthusiasm are evident from the first note to the last on this vividly recorded program. [10/17/2000] --Victor Carr, ClassicsToday.com

Includes work(s) by Arnold Bax. Soloists: Ashley Wass, Martin Roscoe.

Having admirably survived Bax's discursive piano sonatas, Ashley Wass devotes all of his third volume of this composer's piano works to relatively smaller-scaled fare. Actually, the opening selection, What the Minstrel Told Us, times out to 11 minutes. The outer sections feature a bardic melody gently supported by slow moving, impressionistic chords and arpeggiated figures, while a middle section develops this material more agitatedly. Wass summons up all the tone color and sustaining power needed to convey the orchestral sensibility of the piano writing.


He plays the nocturne-like Princess's Rose Garden a bit straighter than Eric Parkin's more garishly-voiced Chandos recording, yet he shapes the chromatic motives with plenty of affection. By contrast, Wass doesn't clarify A Hill Tune's left-hand melodic content and right-hand accompaniment to Parkin's more fluid distinction. However, he scores with more rhythmic snap in the Spanish-tinged Mediterranean and renders the Gopak steadier, sharper, yet slightly slower in contrast to Parkin's brisker, looser approach. In short, collectors who've enjoyed Wass' previous Bax discs also will find this well-recorded, superbly annotated release to their liking. I look forward to this cycle's fourth and final volume.
--Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

Truth to tell, although I have been beguiled by Bax’s chamber music and thrilled by the symphonies, his piano music hasn’t left the same impression. I’m thinking here of Eric Parkin’s Chandos recordings, which I have on LP. No disrespect is intended to Mr. Parkin; it’s a long time since I’ve heard his versions, and the Bax journey has moved on significantly over the years. One day I’ll return to him. For the moment, however, Ashley Wass suggests that Bax’s piano music is a sensational discovery.

Wass, young and British, made it to the Finals of the Leeds International Piano Competition in 2000, and has since notched up some prestigious engagements. Hats off to him for engaging with Bax’s piano output, for on the evidence of this first issue—yes, this is the beginning of a Bax piano music cycle—Wass isn’t playing this music because he’s been asked to, but because he is wholly convinced by it. He plays these selections, written between 1910 and 1920, wonderfully well, and has been superbly recorded. Wass brings real identification to Bax’s wide-ranging invention. Sonata No. 1, the earliest music here, and lasting 22 minutes in this performance, is a single movement fusing Liszt, Rachmaninoff, and Scriabin into an engaging sequence that ends with the intimation of bells pealing out.

Sonata No. 2 is also cast as a single movement, this time of 28 minutes; it’s a work requiring several listens to come to terms with its structure and emotional content. I fully realize that to some people Bax is a closed book, and that the expanse of this work will seem no more than a pointless meander using undistinguished material. Others, such as myself, will be absorbed, bowled over, and riveted by Bax’s depth of utterance and his compositional logic. Whether this sonata has a program or is autobiographical or is war related (the sonata was completed in 1919 and revised the following year), this music’s darkness and brooding is established at the very opening with satanic bass-writing. There are occasional glints of light in this dramatically conflicting music until the 20 minute point, when Bax unleashes an overwhelming release of emotion, in which Wass seems utterly caught up. I wondered if Bax was using as a template the Sonata in B Minor of Liszt, for Bax’s climax has a similar purging effect; Bax returns to the opening material to close the sonata, but it is now less threatening. This is a fabulous work and a fabulous performance, too; no doubt there is editing, but the effect is of a straight through rendition, and this is music that has to be appreciated in one big sweep.

After this, the encores, so to speak, bring some relief and are no letdown in terms of quality. The pounding rhythms of In a Vodka Shop certainly have a Russian stamp; it’s an enjoyable trifle. Nereid is a quietly eloquent piece of tone painting, quite haunting, and very sensitively distilled by Wass. Burlesque lives up to its name; it’s a frisky piece, pure pleasure, if something of a handful for the pianist (Wass has mastered it). The longer, 12-minute Dream in Exile (from 1916) is both nostalgic and elegiac—and like Sonata No. 2, its genesis is probably best explained by the contemporary troubles in Ireland. Once more, Wass plays with real understanding.

A superb issue, then, one completed with an informative booklet note by Lewis Foreman. One hopes Wass has been engaged for the subsequent issues; he really does seem a terrific champion of this neglected music.

Colin Anderson, FANFARE

BAX The Truth about the Russian Dancers. From Dusk till Dawn • Bryden Thomson, cond; London PO • CHANDOS 10457 (67:12)


This is Volume 9 of Chandos’s midprice reissues of Bryden Thomson’s extensive survey of the orchestral music of Arnold Bax. The good news for Bax fans is that these are two obscure but major works showcasing the composer’s distinctive and highly personal orchestral style. The bad news is that the music is not qualitatively on the same level as any of his symphonies or major tone poems. From Dusk till Dawn and The Truth about the Russian Dancers were composed respectively in 1917 and 1920 when Sergei Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes visited London and immediately captured Bax’s artistic imagination. The Truth about the Russian Dancers (at 46 minutes) is a major score (despite its ridiculous plot), and both works are replete with Bax’s typical colorful orchestration. These ballets also prove that Bax is not to be compared with Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, or Delibes as a melodist. Nevertheless, both pieces have their melodic moments. The lengthy and pivotal “Dance of Motherhood” from The Truth about the Russian Dancers is a characteristic Baxian lyrical effusion. “Karissima’s Farewell” is suitably dramatic in a gentle sort of way, and the final allegro vivace dance achieves a level of dramatic urgency worthy of Prokofiev, who seems to be Bax’s principal influence in these ballets. From Dusk till Dawn contains several examples of lovely tone-painting, such as the aptly titled “Summer Night at the Window.” This may not represent Bax at his best, but there is plenty of gorgeously orchestrated, never-before recorded music here for the adventurous listener.


Bryden Thomson is obviously totally committed to Bax and conducts the music with plenty of rhythmic vitality. The sound is unequivocally Chandos, but on the top end of their game. Any Bax-lover will thoroughly enjoy this worthy presentation of some of his virtually unknown ballet music.


FANFARE: Arthur Lintgen

Nympholept?could hardly have better advocay than on this desirable CD.' Which CD 'Bryden Thomson draws out all the romance and passion of these complex, colourful scores?You can sense the sultry, perilous enchantment of the midsummer forest in Nympholept; the music, Debussy-like, capturing all the languor and enticement of the unobtainable...This is music to make your imagination run riot. Sumptuous sound...' BBC Music Magazine Recorded in: All Saints' Church, Tooting, London 9 & 10 January 1986 (Dance of Wild Irravel, Nympholept, Paean), 3-5 March 1986 (Christmas Eve), 22 & 23 October 1987 (Festival Overture) and 1986 & 1987 (Overture to a Picaresque Comedy, Cortège) Producer(s) Tim Oldham (Festival Overture) Brian Couzens (other works) Sound Engineer(s) Philip Couzens (Assistant)

Includes work(s) by Hans-Eberhard Ross. Ensemble: Gould Piano Trio. Soloists: Benjamin Frith, Lucy Gould, Alice Neary, Robert Plane.

This album presents selected works performed by harpist Laura Newell. "American harpist Laura Newell was born December 16, 1900 in Denver. She studied harp there with Kajetan Attl, and at New England Conservatory with Alfred Holý. A pioneering orchestral and chamber freelance musician in the male-dominated musical world of the era, she played with the Cleveland Orchestra, National Symphony, and in New York with WOR's Wallenstein Sinfonietta, NBC Symphony, and on radio and television with The Bell Telephone Hour. She recorded the Britten Ceremony of Carols with Robert Shaw for Victor twice, and recorded the Debussy trio for Columbia and Decca. Her recordings with the Shulman brothers - of the Ravel Introduction and Allegro, with the New Friends of Rhythm, and these recordings for their Philharmonia label - reflect her remarkable versatility, which transcended genres. Her student and close friend, founding editor of the American Harp Journal Sam Milligan, said that she had "the cleanest technique I ever heard." She retired in the early 1970s and devoted her creative activity to painting watercolors, calligraphy and enamels. Laura Newell died in New York City January 24, 1981". -Jay Shulman

This re-coupling brings together some of the composer's less well-known but hugely colourful tone-poems for the fist time. This is the second volume in Chandos' series of orchestral works by Arnold Bax, released for the first time on Chandos' mid-price reissue label. Recorded in: All Saints' Church, Tooting, London January 1986 (Spring Fire, Scherzo, Northern Ballad No. 2), 1986 & 1987 (Northern Ballad, No. 3, Mediterranean) Producer(s) Brian Couzens Sound Engineer(s) Ralph Couzens Philip Couzens (Assistant)

David Lloyd-Jones' new Bax Sixth is especially welcome since the only other modern recording is available only as part of a complete set of symphonies on Chandos. Even if that were not the case, Lloyd-Jones scores over Bryden Thompson with his generally more incisive reading. Both conductors make much of the first movement's melancholic rancor (in tempos that are virtually identical), but the central slow movement benefits from Lloyd-Jones' more rhapsodic approach, whereas Thompson seems content to languish (thereby adding more than two minutes to Lloyd-Jones' timing). The finale too finds Lloyd-Jones possessing a stronger sense of forward momentum as he reveals more of the music's dramatic architecture.


The Scottish National players yield nothing to their London counterparts--if anything their brass have the edge in terms of projection and rhythmic alacrity. Naxos' recording, while less opulently reverberant than the Chandos production, presents a sharper image that allows more of Bax's multilayered detail to emerge clearly (while still swallowing some of the top end, glockenspiel in particular). To top it off, Lloyd-Jones offers first-rate performances of Bax's lushly exotic Into the Twilight and the dreamy Summer Music. Certainly a must for Bax fans, but newcomers can unreservedly join in the fun too.
--Victor Carr Jr, ClassicsToday.com