Bax’s new Winter Legends (Harriet Cohen) longwinded rambling boring
stuff — so feeble and dull after the Ireland [Mai-Dun].
(From Benjamin Britten’s diary.)
Well, the teenager was entitled to his opinion, but many admirers of
Bax’s music take a different view, and the composer himself ranked
it among his best works. However, it is clear from newspaper reviews
of the time that Winter
Legends left many contemporary critics disappointed:
. . .
as a whole [it] hardly seems to rank
with the finest things of Bax’s recent symphonic work. It is diffuse
and laboured, though the labour is relieved by so many exquisite
moments of sound. (The Times,
11 February 1932, p. 10.)
It brought less to an admirer of Bax than he had hoped to get from
it. Perhaps no other work by Bax is a more profuse display of his
peculiar luxuriance. Where it failed was in the ordering of the
luxury. In the course of the three Symphonies it had been
plentifully hinted that Bax was working towards a more disciplined
way of expanding and connecting his thoughts. In the present work he
has relapsed, and the music explains itself bit by bit, each bit
better, if possible, than the last, but defeating the ear’s longing
for growth and continuity of effect. (Musical
Times, March 1932, p. 264.)
To-day we have in ‘Winter Legends’ a remorseless study in the
present-day mood of analytical psychics. Nothing is full and fair
and in the round, it is all contingent. It was conceived perhaps in
the spirit of the age, but is already out of date: this age is
burgeoning in hope. (The
Observer, 14 February 1932, p. 12.)
I have no idea what The
Observer’s music critic is trying to say, but the following
passage from Harriet Cohen’s autobiography,
A Bundle of Time (pp.
201-2), suggests that the newspaper should have sent along a
photographer instead ― the result would have been far more
interesting:
At the rehearsal there was an expression of really touching
solidarity among the senior composers for, apart from some young
ones dotted about the hall, I noticed from the platform that Arnold,
sitting in the stalls, was flanked on either side by Gustav Holst
and Vaughan Williams.
What a fascinating picture that would have made. I wonder whether
Bax’s two distinguished colleagues formed a more favourable
impression of the work than the young Britten.
Whatever one’s view of the score ― and I know one keen Baxian who
feels that there is too much stopping and starting in it ― I am sure
that this excellent recording will win it many new friends. It is
clear right from the start that this is going to be a vigorous and
totally committed performance. The opening low orchestral chord,
which sometimes fails to register, is quite audible here, and the
ensuing piano ‘whirlwind’ (Bax’s word) is played with tremendous
energy. The fast passages in this first movement are generally taken
at a quicker pace than in any other performance that I have heard,
with largamente markings taken less broadly than usual. This is
characteristic of the performers’ urgent view of the work and has
the effect of making it sound as if we are listening to a live,
concert performance. The final section (marked ‘Trionfale’) has
plenty of swagger, though I wish there had not been an unmarked
reduction in the wind dynamics of the second bar in an attempt to
let the strings’ triplets come through; but everything is back on
track at the next bar, and it is impossible not to be swept along in
the glittering grandeur of Bax’s closing pages, with the Bournemouth
Symphony Orchestra on top form. The concluding cadence sounds more
decisive here than in any other performance I have heard.
The second movement is all that one could wish for, with the soloist
making the most of the extreme contrasts in dynamics and mood.
Highlights include the exquisitely soft playing of the brass, the
ferocious eruption of sound from the orchestra’s nether regions, the
overwhelming climaxes later on, and some sensitive playing from the
solo violin. Following Harriet Cohen’s 1954 performance (available
on Dutton CDBP 9751), Wass and Judd cut nine bars in this movement,
unlike Margaret Fingerhut with Bryden Thomson and the LPO (currently
on Chandos
CHAN 10209),
who play the work complete. The cuts are indicated in Bax’s
full-score manuscript and were either made by him or with his
approval.
Again, there is little to fault and a great deal to admire in the
finale, which begins quietly with a solo tuba against rippling
arpeggios on the piano and sustained strings chords. Both pianist
and conductor manage the many changes of mood and tempo with great
aplomb, and the final climax, just before the epilogue, is
overwhelming. As in the second movement, a cut is made in the
epilogue (again following Harriet Cohen’s performance), and here I
think it is a decided improvement, the deleted passage striking me
as being an unnecessary intrusion. But if you want to hear the
movement complete, there is always Margaret Fingerhut’s recording,
which is also extremely well played, though less clearly recorded.
We knew from their CD of Bax’s Symphonic Variations and Left-Hand
Concertante (Naxos
8.570774)
that Wass and Judd make a formidable team, and this new recording of
Winter Legends can only
enhance their reputation. I gather that they have never performed
together in a concert, something that ought surely to be rectified
as soon as possible.
Morning Song,
the second piece on this disc, has always struck me as being a
perfect work of its kind: an amiable, unpretentious, tuneful piece
of light music tailor-made for its purpose: the twenty-first
birthday of the present Queen, who, following the death of Sidonie
Goossens aged 105 in 2004, is the only dedicatee of a Bax work still
living and one of the dwindling number of people who actually knew
him. Harriet Cohen’s recording with Malcolm Sargent, originally on a
Columbia 78 rpm disc and now on a Symposium CD (1336), is most
successful in capturing its easy-going mood, which, as Bax described
it, ‘derives
a good deal from the Sussex spring time. It is quite a simple and
lyrical work with nothing dramatic in its development’. The new
recording (7:11) takes the allegretto tempo marking somewhat faster
than in Margaret Fingerhut’s Chandos performance (8:09), which was
itself faster than Harriet Cohen’s old Columbia recording (8:31),
but I soon found myself adjusting to the speed. Ashley Wass plays
the solo part beautifully and, where necessary, with rhythmic
precision, and the Bournemouth players sound as if they are relaxing
and enjoying themselves after the rigours of
Winter Legends. The
performance has an irresistible
joie de vivre and the
various solo contributions from the woodwind and the leader of the
orchestra are most sensitively played.
A complete contrast in mood is provided by the third work on this
disc, Saga Fragment for
piano, strings, trumpet and percussion. Shortly before the recording
began, James Judd decided to reduce the number of string players in
this piece to make it more in keeping with its chamber-music origin:
it was originally written in 1922 as the Piano Quartet. This wirier
sound is quite noticeable when compared with
Winter Legends and
Morning Song, especially
when the strings are playing fortissimo, and Wass and Judd bring to
the work an even darker quality than in the powerful performance on
Chandos by Margaret Fingerhut and Bryden Thomson with the LPO.
According to Harriet Cohen, the piano-quartet version was admired by
Bartók, and one can see why: nothing could be further removed from
the notion of Bax as a dreamer in the Celtic twilight. But it must
be extremely difficult to play in that form, though a music critic
was sufficiently impressed to call it ‘a fragment of genius’ after
the first performance. The orchestral version was made in 1932, and
Bax described it as a ‘tough pill’. The work opens vigorously with
repeated chords before the piano enters with the principal theme,
played here with tremendous attack. The opening pages are
exhilarating, and contrast is provided by the soft intertwining solo
strings, again played most sensitively, as is the following andante
con moto, which leads to a catchy, rhythmic tune with a hint of the
blues in it. The ‘development’ section contains several pages of
beguiling sounds with the soloist playing mysterious scales to
accompany the thematic material in the trumpet and strings. The last
few pages of ‘March Tempo’ are taken at a cracking pace, and it is a
tribute to the skill of the trumpeter that he manages to play his
final flourish so well at such a speed. I am not sure that Bax
intended the ending to be played
quite so fast, but it
certainly brings the work (and the CD) to an exhilarating
conclusion. If you like your
Saga Fragment lean, mean and reckless, then this new recording
is for you. If you prefer something a little less impetuous but by
no means lacking in vigour and rhythmic precision, Margaret
Fingerhut’s Chandos recording (using a full body of strings rather
than a pared down one) is an excellent alternative, despite the
cavernous recording. What we still lack, though, is a really
first-rate performance of the original Piano Quartet score, neither
the Chandos version (CHAN 8391) nor the Meridian (CDE84519)
being entirely satisfactory.
The sound quality on this new Naxos disc is very good, with a
powerful bass, enabling the listener to appreciate, for instance,
Bax’s idiosyncratic use of bass clarinet and double bassoon. At a
first hearing it seemed over-resonant, but my ears soon adjusted and
I heard many orchestral details in
Winter Legends that had
never come through so clearly in previous performances, such as the
passage for four solo violins in the slow movement, which usually
sounds feeble but here comes across as Bax must have intended. Just
occasionally some of the woodwind detail fails to register, but the
scoring is very thick in places and there is simply not enough time
at recording sessions to deal with every single last detail of
balance. The booklet notes by Andrew Burn are informative, and there
is an appropriately wintry scene on the front cover. A shame,
though, that the name of the excellent trumpet soloist in
Saga Fragment is not
given anywhere in the documentation. For the record, he is the BSO’s
principal trumpeter, Peter Turnball.
I’ll come clean. Most lovers of Bax have a blind spot, and mine is
the massive concertante
work Winter Legends. Its
brazen savagery and monochrome intensity have attracted many
admirers down the years, not least the composer himself who wrote,
in a letter to Adrian Boult after the premiere, that “I am not sure
that it is not one of my best things.” The double negative is
telling: what are we to make of a substantial three-movement work
(with epilogue) which is not quite a symphony, not quite a concerto
and not quite a gigantic tone poem? Thirty years after first hearing
Winter Legends, and
despite my admiration for its many moments of arresting imagination,
I still have difficulty getting my bearings. It does not stick.
There again, not warming to its elusive, chill bleakness might be
the point.
Bax wrote or orchestrated much of the work in 1929-30 at his winter
retreat, Morar on the West Coast of Scotland. Morar looks two ways –
out across white sands to the western isles of the Celtic sea,
inland to the hard northern crags of the Grampians; and
Winter Legends was
perhaps the first of Bax’s major orchestral utterances to look to
those Northern wilds rather than the milder seascapes of the West
for inspiration. It marks a change in musical style, too, from the
generous abundance of the 3rd
Symphony to a tight, wry harmonic language and brittle sound
palette, featuring a battery of percussion effects including an icy
xylophone and baleful, shivering gong.
Winter Legends
has appeared twice before on CD. Most of us, I imagine, cut our
teeth on Margaret Fingerhut’s uncut 1986 edition with the LPO under
Bryden Thomson, which with its slow tempi and resonant acoustic
certainly conveys the gargantuan mood, if losing out in forward
momentum and orchestral clarity. Even in its most recent incarnation
(Orchestral Works, Vol.7) the Chandos recording is strident and
lacking in body, far from their best. This was valuably supplemented
in 2005 by an off-air mastering (from Dutton) of Harriet Cohen’s
1954 broadcast with the BBC SO under Clarence Raybauld. Despite
sonic limitations and imprecisions of ensemble, the dedicatee’s
performance better conveys Bax’s wayward, romantic sweep and
obsessive hard-edged forward impulsion.
The new Naxos issue squares the
circle nicely, combining the amplitude of the Chandos disc with the
urgent fantasy of Cohen’s reading. Ashley Wass surpasses her in
virtuosic security, and his pinpoint accuracy can convey weird
things, mechanistically cold and strange: listen to his way with the
oddly “bluesy”, ambulatory main theme of the slow movement or the
haunted “poisoned fountain” arpeggios at the start of the third to
hear what I mean.
James Judd, to his credit, is prepared to risk exceeding normal Bax
speed limits. His performance is nearly five minutes (!) shorter
than Thomson’s, partly due to the decision to take Bax’s optional
cuts in the second and third movements; but Judd’s allegros harness
a fierce thrust and dynamism which makes sure we’re not mired in
detail. It’s not the Bournemouth orchestra’s fault if some of the
ear-shattering climaxes sound congested, and I’m not inclined to
blame the Naxos engineers either. Are there perhaps moments in this
score where the composer miscalculates just how loudly, and for how
long, his full orchestral forces can batter away at us? Yet Bax
comes up with some wild effects, such as a jaunty,
Petrushka-like dance in
the first movement for syncopated piano, bass tuba and tambourine,
and the sardonic, bare-bones xylophone against striding timpani
later in the same movement, which are pure magic. Such things come
across most vividly here, and if you’re new to
Winter Legends the Naxos is without a shadow of doubt the disc to have.
If
Naxos’s
concertante balance in
Winter Legends is convincing, it’s equally so in the two shorter
works, more than makeweights in this splendid addition to the Bax
discography. If Wass’s cool pianism offers less melting charm than
Harriet Cohen’s own reading of
Morning Song, he captures the music’s lightness and fresh
innocence with sure hands. And for me the best comes last with
Saga Fragment, Bax’s own
orchestration of his 1922 Piano Quartet, a terse and punchy
evocation of those Northern Wastes and “battles of long ago” which
the composer described as “rather a tough pill”. Its memorable
themes and compressed textures said as much to me in ten minutes as
the main meat managed in forty; and Judd, Wass and the (reduced)
Bournemouth
forces deliver Saga Fragment
like a series of fierce hammer-blows to the solar plexus. Wicked.
Score Information
