CD1
[74:03]
First
Symphony (1921-22) in E flat major
[31:58] (dedicated to John Ireland)
1
I Allegro moderato e feroce - Moderato
espressivo - Tempo I [12:56]
2
II Lento solenne [10:34]
3
III Allegro maestoso - Allegro vivace
ma non troppo presto [8:17]
Third
Symphony (1928-29) [41:51] (dedicated
to Sir Henry J. Wood)
4
I Lento moderato - Allegro moderato
- [16:42]
5
II Lento [11:12]
6
III Moderato - Più mosso - Tempo
I [13:48]
CD2
[77:24]
Second
Symphony (1924-26) in E minor and
C major [38:54] (dedicated to Serge
Koussevitzky)
1
I Molto moderato - Allegro moderato
[16:20]
2
II Andante - Più mosso - Poco
largamente [12:11]
3
III Poco largamente - Allegro feroce
- Meno mosso [10:13]
Fourth
Symphony (1930) [38:19] (Dedicated
to Paul Corder)
4
I Allegro moderato [15:35]
5
II Lento moderato - Più mosso
(Allegro moderato) [12:45]
6
III Allegro - Allegro scherzando [9:50]
CD3
[73:41]
Fifth
Symphony (1931-32) [37:55] (dedicated
to Jean Sibelius)
1
I Poco lento - Allegro con fuoco [15:46]
2
II Poco lento - Molto tranquillo - Tempo
I [10:12]
3
III Poco moderato - Allegro - Lento
- Tempo I (Allegro) [11:48]
Sixth
Symphony (1934-35) [35:33] (dedicated
to Adrian Boult)
4
I Moderato - Allegro con fuoco [10:06]
5
II Lento, molto espressivo - Andante
con moto [8:19]
6
III Introduction. Lento moderato - Poco
più vivo [16:57]
CD4
[69:37]
1
Rogue's Comedy Overture (1936)
[9:59] (dedicated to Julius Harrison)
premiere
recording
2
Tintagel (1917-19) [15:13]
(dedicated to Miss Harriet Cohen)
Seventh
Symphony (1938-39) [44:02] (dedicated
to the People of America)
3
I Allegro - Poco meno mosso - Tempo
I [16:39]
4
II Lento - Più mosso. In Legendary
Mood - Tempo I [13:32]
5
III Theme and Variations: Allegro [13:38]
CD5
[60:43]
Interview
with Vernon Handley by Andrew McGregor
I
am writing this review in mid-December
and it is pleasing to report that this
excellent boxed set is selling, according
to Chandos, "extremely well".
They are being coy, understandably so,
for marketing reasons, but I will risk
their slight displeasure by saying that
sales of this set surpassed four figures
very quickly. This is very significant.
Who would have thought, just ten years
ago, that such brilliant sales of a
boxed set of Bax symphonies could be
possible? I guess that it is not only
the reputation of Vernon Handley as
the Bax interpreter but also
the success of the David Lloyd-Jones’s
Naxos super budget cycle that must have
encouraged so many new Bax enthusiasts
to come to know this magnificent music.
And it is typical of the generosity
of Vernon Handley to say in his interview,
that comprises CD5 of this set, that
he learnt much from Lloyd-Jones’ cycle,
"because Lloyd-Jones knows his
Russian music and of course Bax was
undoubtedly influenced by Russian music"
(e.g. Glazunov and Stravinsky.) ‘Tod’
Handley also praises Bryden Thomson’s
interpretation of Bax’s Fifth Symphony,
as "marvellous!" But then
Handley is generosity itself when it
comes to music that is dear to him.
Some twenty years ago he went out of
his way, in a busy schedule, to record
an interview, in a Guildford car park,
for BBC local radio and the British
Music Society. His comments on Bax,
then, and particularly on the symphonies,
is confirmed, and, of course, enlarged,
in this spontaneous, in-depth, thought-provoking,
and articulate interview.
I
repeatedly returned to this interview,
while studying these fine performances,
and I shall highlight it in this review.
In the main, I will confine myself to
an overview of the set, informed by
Tod’s interview, rather than concentrating
on reviewing individual works’ performances
because I will inevitably find myself
repeating the plaudits of my fellow
reviewers, and Bax experts, Richard
Adams, Rob
Barnett and Graham
Parlett made in their reviews already
posted on this site.
First
of all I was interested in Handley’s
statement that the pattern of Spring
Fire informs the construction
of the First Symphony proper. Later,
Tod reminds us that the Fourth Symphony
was often regarded as the weakest of
the set because it was lighter in tone
than the rest (but, as he declares,
why shouldn’t a composer be allowed
a lighter utterance). As such, there
has been an opinion that Winter Legends,
for piano and orchestra, composed,
around the same time as the Fourth Symphony
(roughly 1929-31) might have been more
acceptable as the composer’s Fourth
Symphony. Now, interestingly, the early
Spring Fire (1913) remained unperformed
during the composer’s lifetime; yet
it is described thus in the Chandos
recording: ‘Spring Fire Symphony’.
All this leads me to suggesting that,
perhaps, the time has come for a reconsideration
of the numbering of Bax’s symphonies
to include both Spring Fire,
as Bax’s Symphony No. 1, and Winter
Legends. After all, the numberings
of the symphonies of Schubert, Dvořák
and others’ have been reassessed, so
why not those of Bax?
[Winter
Legends, coupled with Saga Fragment,
performed by Margaret Fingerhut (piano)
with the London Philharmonic Orchestra
conducted by Bryden Thomson is available
on Chandos CHAN 8484 and Spring Fire
conducted by Vernon Handley is now included
on Chandos Classics X10155]
The
notion that Bax’s seven symphonies are
a developing saga in, perhaps, two parts
with a climax reached in the Epilogue
of the Third Symphony, is well known
(postulated by Colin Scott-Sutherland
in his pioneering 1973 book, Arnold
Bax). It is confirmed by Handley’s
remarks and his eloquent and far-seeing
readings, deeply thought-out over many
years (in terms of viewing the cycle
as a whole). I have never been made
so aware of the symphonies’ inter-relationships.
For instance, and to quote just one
example, in Handley’s wonderfully atmospheric
and dramatic Lento solenne slow
movement of the First Symphony, way
he realizes the elegiac quality of the
funeral tread at about 3:40 surely points
the way, through minimal metamorphosis
to the ostinato tread of the Epilogue
of the Third Symphony and to some sort
of resolution at that the end of that
Epilogue, the ‘mid-point’ of this saga.
What an indelible emotional impact Handley’s
reading makes of this First Symphony’s
slow movement - and the whole of the
Symphony for that matter; the events
of the Easter Uprising in Dublin and
the losses of the Great War etc. shown
so clearly to have affected Bax’s writing.
Consistently,
Handley has always argued that Bax’s
symphonies are built on very sound classical,
basically simple structures with development
by metamorphosis of material stated
fundamentally at the outset. In these
readings, utilizing faster tempi than
usual to press the music forward, the
structure is significantly more apparent
not only of each symphony but also the
overall binding structure of all seven
symphonies. Talking about his faster
tempi, he makes the point that, paradoxically,
in these symphonies, beauty is revealed
rather than lost by pushing the music
forward. Thus, it is a more natural,
more rugged beauty that Handley reveals
rather than the languid romantic view
of some who have tended to think, erroneously,
of Bax’s material as akin to that of
say Rachmaninov or Richard Strauss.
Although a self-confessed brazen romantic,
Bax was clear-sighted enough to acknowledge
the hardships, tragedies and terrors
that lurked behind the beauties of the
Irish and Scottish locations that so
influenced him.
Intriguingly,
Handley suggests that Bax, in his symphonic
writing, could be realising emotions
for his listeners that many had never
experienced. I am reminded of the quotation
from Bax’s story The Lifting of the
Veil that Lewis Foreman chooses
to introduce his notes for the Bryden
Thomson recording of Bax’s Fourth Symphony,
the story in which the composer encapsulates
his momentary states of ecstatic vision
and it is Handley, for me, who is the
conductor who comes closest to understanding
and realising these visionary experiences
and emotions for us. Tod speaks too,
of how Bax can reveal beauty and then
almost at once show its opposite darker
side. Sometimes terrible beauties indeed
are revealed, for instance, in the wild
and mysterious barbarity of Handley’s
outer movements of the Second Symphony
and the opening movement of the Third.
Another
of Tod’s ideas that I find fascinating
is his concept of hierarchical beauty,
or grades of beauty and vision, as applied
to these symphonies. This notion adds
another dimension and further richness
to his interpretations. There is palpable
mystical and romantic beauty revealed
in Tod’s reading of the slow movements
of the Second and Third Symphonies with
Handley again pointing the opening pages
of the former clearly towards the Epilogue
of the Third. Then there is his wonderfully
expressive view of that Third Symphony’s
celebrated Epilogue, quite the most
magical I have ever heard. It is so
wondrously other-worldly and faintly
disturbing as surely Bax intended after
hearing those strange ‘fairy-like?’
sounds in the north of Donegal. This
Epilogue, as Tod perceptively says,
"wins through to new moods."
Another level of almost liturgical beauty
is reached at the end of the Epilogue
of the Sixth Symphony where some sort
of resolution is reached after the turbulence
and conflict of the preceding symphonies.
Handley quite rightly, in my opinion,
rates Bax’s Sixth as the finest of his
symphonies and as one of the finest
of the 20th century. His
interpretation, although lacking the
sheer barbarity of Lloyd-Jones’ reading
of the wild climax of the Third movement,
is, for me, the most satisfying on disc.
Yet, like Richard Adams, I would not
like to be without the wonderful Norman
Del Mar recording for Lyrita. If only
a re-release on CD of that recording
could be persuaded. And at the end of
the series, there is the serene almost
resigned beauty of Bax’s leave-taking
of the symphonic form that is the Epilogue
of the Seventh Symphony, a brilliant
reading this and one that I will treasure.
I
was intrigued by Handley’s statement,
at the end of his interview, that he
is a Celt at heart, (although his tongue-in-cheek
aside that he likes Irish jokes raises
a rather disconcerting question mark
over his assertion). I raise this point
because I consistently hear phrases
of a definite Irish turn in his readings
of these symphonies, even in the later
symphonies that are supposed to be associated
more with Morar in northwest Scotland
and with Sibelius (yes, even in the
Fifth dedicated to Sibelius). But then
Glencolmcille and Morar are not exactly
dissimilar and the wildness of the former
location "where almost every acre,
every tree and rock had its own ‘fairy’
lore" – Glencolmcille Folk Museum,
must surely have been carried over into
his subconscious and into his music.
Tintagel
receives a muscular and passionately
romantic performance to equal, nay surpass
any of the numerous rival recordings
and it is useful to have such an exuberant
reading of the less consequential, but
colourful and cheeky Rogues Comedy
Overture on disc
This
set fully deserves the MusicWeb’s ‘Recording
of the Year’ appellation, it is without
doubt, my overall recording of 2003.
This is the Bax symphonies cycle
to which I shall turn again and again.
Ian
Lace
BBC Philharmonic/Vernon Handley