UPDATES

My brother Graham has recently acquired a copy of the February 1944 edition of The Gramophone", in which an anonymous reviewer enthuses - not uncritically- over the newly-issued recording of Bax's Third Symphony. I have scanned the review and posted it on a separate page.

Martin Yates's realisation of Moeran's Second Symphony, left unfinished by the composer at his death in 1950, has now been released by Dutton (CDLX 7281) coupled with Rodney Newton's orchestration of an overture from which Moeran later used material for his First Symphony. The symphony is in four connected movements (allegro - allegro vivace - adagietto - allegro vigoroso e poco maestoso) and is so convincingly Moeranesque that it is hard to see how Yates could have been more faithful to the spirit of the composer as well as to what remains of the letter. Only in the last movement do I have some doubts, perhaps more about the structure than the individual components, even though the latter are logically derived from the foregoing material. But the first three movements are incredibly authentic, and Martin Yates is to be congratulated for adding so richly to the regrettably meagre repertoire of Moeran's orchestral music.

Bax's 6th Symphony (plus Walton's Viola Concerto and Elgar's In the South) was very well performed by the Westminster Philharmonic Orchestra on Saturday 15 October at St John's, Waterloo. Colin Anderson's review on the Classical Source website reads: "The WPO and Jonathan Butcher had the measure of the piece (for the most part), the orchestra secure and well-tempered. The pulsation and wildness of the opening was arresting, a vivid kinship with the rawness of nature; rocks, sea and forests. Yet this dramatic and enigmatic work is headed Symphony and, for all the potential images of untamed life softened by twilight, is concise in its structures. Similarly the rapt reverie of the slow movement – Bax at his most Delian (Delius had died in 1934 while Bax worked on his new Symphony) –, with a ghostly march as volatile contrast, was kept on a tight rein without denuding either beauty or incandescence (although someone’s mobile had a go at the secluded final bars). The multi-tasking finale (on the edge of the World or deep-rooted in Middle Earth) and as long as the first two movements combined – Introduction-Scherzo & Trio-Epilogue – wasn’t quite so successful, for all that this is the Symphony’s greatest music. Alison Downie was hypnotic in unfolding that strange clarinet solo, the violins were tender in response, but the slow ‘Trio’ dawdled (and the strings' tuning was suspect) while the big climax wasn’t the last word in upheaval. The (uneasy) calm then silence of the final bars was too soon applauded into and, throughout the work, the man at the Verger’s desk behind the audience wasn’t averse to some paper-rustling while doing what seemed office work! Still, it was good to hear the individual and stimulating Bax 6 live, so much credit to the WPO and Jonathan Butcher for putting it on and having a really good stab at it."

Winter Legends - The Naxos recording of Winter Legends, Morning Song and Saga Fragment, played by Ashley Wass with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra under James Judd, was released in March 2011 (8.572597). Naxos has also recently issued a new recording of the Legend for viola and piano played by Matthew Jones and Michael Hampton (8.572579).

Bach Book - The first recording of Bax's arrangement of Bach's Fantasia in G (BWV 572) is now available from Hyperion (CDA67767) played by Jonathan Plowright. It's part of 'A Bach Book for Harriet Cohen', which is receiving its first complete recording together with Bach transcriptions by other English composers and pianists, including Harriet Cohen herself. It also includes one by the Scotsman Ronald Stevenson, whose forthright views on his colleagues' arrangements are given in Calum MacDonald's comprehensive notes: 'What a lot of bunglers these English composers are in piano-writing, as evinced in this album, which was a good idea spoilt!'. The notes can be viewed on the Hyperion website (hyperion-records.co.uk), and you can also listen to short excerpts from each track. Thanks to Ian Maxwell for drawing attention to this release.

Bax's Concertino, completed and orchestrated by Graham Parlett - programme notes by GP.
Following Bax's death in Cork on 3 October 1953, Harriet Cohen visited The White Horse Hotel in Storrington, Sussex where he had lived for the last thirteen years, and took away his manuscripts, most of which she later bequeathed to the British Library. Among them was the short score of a three-movement work for piano and orchestra with the title 'Concertino', and this is without doubt the abandoned 'small concerto' referred to in Bax's letter to Edwin Evans. The work is in three movements, of which the first two are both complete in the form of a rough score written in pencil, mainly on two staves, while the third is neatly written out in ink as a two-piano score.
   In most cases it was fairly easy to determine which notes in the first movement were intended to be played by the solo piano and which were intended for the orchestra since Bax has marked 'Piano' or 'Orch' against certain passages. Sections intended for both piano and orchestra presented more of a problem, and it was sometimes necessary to devise additional passagework for the piano when playing with the orchestra. Bax left only a few indications of the intended orchestration ('str con sord' (muted strings) and 'fag' (bassoons) appear at the opening, for example), but it is clear from the layout of the music that a fairly large orchestra would have been required. The mood is quite dark in places, with echoes of the earlier Winter Legends, and it is much more akin to Bax's later ' northern' works than to the earlier 'Celtic' tone-poems. The slow movement was a little more problematic. Bar 11 has the word 'Orch' written above it, which suggested that the opening was intended for the piano, but there are few other indications of who is meant to play what, though 'clar' (clarinet) and 'horns' are marked against two melodic lines. Another difficulty was the fact that some bars contained nothing but chords, which, left as they were, would have made the movement sound intolerably static; no doubt Bax would have developed these if he had finished the work. It was therefore necessary in several places to elaborate both the orchestral and piano parts. The opening is similar in mood to the slow movement of the later left-hand Concertante, but darker elements intrude, and the music becomes quite grim in places.
   The finale was the easiest movement to realize. The solo part on the upper two staves needed hardly any editing, and the orchestral part was also quite explicit, though there is no indication of the intended instrumentation other than the word 'timp', which occurs at one point. The movement is in 3/4 time throughout and is in effect a scherzo containing some of Bax's most consistently jovial and unbuttoned music, quite at odds with the 'perpetual political tension' of which he wrote in his letter to Edwin Evans. It could almost be described as Bax's 'apotheosis of the dance', the phrase that Wagner applied to Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, and indeed the mood, if not the manner, is quite close to the first movement of that work.