There are two ways to obtain these Chandos recordings of Bax’s
Symphonic Variations and Winter Legends as mp3 downloads.
Alternatively, they are available together on a 2-CD set for the
price of one mid-price recording. In fact, if you wish to purchase
the reissued coupling, you would be better going for it in CD
format (CHAN10209X) – it’s actually much cheaper than the mp3
at £7.99 for the 2-CD set from Chandos’s own theclassicalshop,
even less from some suppliers, against £6 per CD for the
mp3. Better value as a 320kbps mp3 download from classicsonline
at £9.98, but that’s still dearer than the CDs. The cheapest way
to obtain the mp3 version of CHAN10209 is from emusic – 12 tracks
of whatever monthly total you sign up for.
The 2-CD reissue is actually very short value –
hence the reduced price for the CDs – since the two shorter
works have been relocated to other volumes: Morning Song
is now coupled with the Violin and Cello Concertos on CHAN10154X,
Saga Fragment with Four Songs and several orchestral
pieces on CHAN10159X.
For reasons which I have explained in my reviews
of the Violin and Cello Concertos, I prefer these concertante
works in their original couplings, the Violin Concerto on CHAN9003
and the Cello Concerto on CHAN8494, still available as mp3s, though
not on CD. The Four Songs with which Saga Fragment
is now coupled are far from being my favourite Bax works for reasons
given in my review of their original coupling with the Seventh
Symphony. Together with what seems to me the logical pairings
of concertante works with piano, you have my reasons for preferring
the couplings on CHAN8484 and 8516 (as detailed below), especially
as the inspiration for Winter Legends and Saga Fragment
is so similar.
Windows Explorer reports that the files from CHAN8484
and 8516 are at 192kbps, whereas the newer downloads are at
320kbps, but that need be no serious handicap, especially when
the newer coupling offers such very short value. Even at the
lower bit-rate, the sound is very acceptable, though keener
ears may prefer the CD or the newer downloads.
Bax devotees will not expect virtuoso display in
the Symphonic Variations, though newcomers may be looking
for something more in the mould of César Franck’s piece of that
name. The Bax work is more thoughtful, more discursive, more
episodic – and, yes, if you are looking for something sharper
and more focused, rambling. It takes six variations and an intermezzo,
lasting almost 50 minutes to explore a number of themes, only
loosely connected with each other – Youth, Nocturne, Strife,
The Temple, Play, Enchantment and Triumph. It pre-dates the
period when Bax’s inspiration was in full stride. For all that,
it is well worth hearing and you are hardly likely to hear it
better performed than here – in fact, I believe that this is
the only available recording. You would be well advised to take
advantage of Chandos’s offer to join the tracks of the Variations,
to avoid brief drop-outs in music which is continuous across
the tracks.
Morning Song, commissioned for the 21st Birthday
of Princess Elizabeth, is an attractive shorter piece, which
also receives a sympathetic performance, ideally coupled with
the Variations. Never one to settle anywhere for long,
Bax was at the time living in one room above the bar in a pub
in Sussex, hence the sub-title.
I was very happy, too, with the performance of
Winter Legends until I read RB’s review
of the recording with Harriet Cohen and Clarence Raybould on
the Dutton label (CDBP9751). Cohen was, of course the only begetter
of the work and there are grounds for regarding her interpretation
as authoritative. RB notes that this performance pulls no punches
and is more exciting and abandoned than Fingerhut. To some extent
the considerable difference in playing time (Cohen’s 39:39 against
Fingerhut’s 43:19) is due to the restoration of several passages
previously cut, but it may also explain that last 5% which I
felt this Chandos recording was missing.
Normally I favour Bryden Thomson’s leisurely tempi
in Bax, giving the listener plenty of time to view the scenery,
but Winter Legends is the exception to the rule: this
is scenery which we probably want to move through a little faster.
I guess the Cohen version, for all its sub-fusc off-air recording
quality, provides that little bit extra that I’m looking for
in a work which hitherto has almost (but not quite) convinced
me of its worth. It’s definitely on my shopping list.
I don’t wish to make too much of the shortcomings
of the Fingerhut version, however. In general the performance
supports those who see the work as quasi-symphonic – powerful
music in the three-movement-plus-epilogue manner of all the
numbered symphonies, dating from between the Third and Fourth
of these. Unlike their recordings of the symphonies, Chandos
track the epilogue separately.
Saga Fragment is an orchestration of a movement from
a Piano Quartet but it sounds anything but cobbled together.
Fingerhut’s account is very convincing – if anything the most
convincing of her performances of any of these four works; given
that she offers the only available recording of this work and
the only modern recording of the Legends, my recommendation
of CHAN8484 is therefore only very slightly muted.
The notes by Lewis Foreman are excellent and the
recording, in any format, very good. If you have already made
the acquaintance of Bax’s symphonies, these recordings – whichever
format you choose – could well be an ideal next step.
I’ve been listening to and writing about a good
deal of Bax and Buxtehude recently – two very different composers,
but I’ve yet to become sated with either.
Brian
Wilson
Additional
options discussed:
Sir Arnold BAX (1883-1953)
Symphonic
Variations for
Piano and Orchestra (1917-19) [49:34]
Morning
Song (Maytime
in Sussex) (1947) [8:09]
Margaret Fingerhut (piano)
London Philharmonic Orchestra/Bryden
Thomson
rec.
All Saints’ Church, Tooting, London, 7-8 January 1987. DDD.
CHANDOS mp3 CHAN8516 
[57:52]
Sir Arnold BAX (1883-1953)
Winter
Legends for
Piano and Orchestra (1929) [43:19]
Saga
Fragment for
Piano and Small Orchestra (1922, orch.1933) [11:13]
Margaret Fingerhut (piano)
London Philharmonic Orchestra/Bryden
Thomson
rec.
All Saints’ Church, Tooting, London, 3-4 April 1986. DDD.
CHANDOS mp3 CHAN8484
[54:38]
