Sir Arnold BAX (1883-1953)
From the Hills of Dreams: The forgotten songs of Arnold Bax
Jeremy Huw Williams (baritone)
Paula Fan (piano)
rec. 2020, Jim Brady Recording Studio, University of Arizona, USA
All first recordings
EM RECORDS EMRCD073 [77:56]
For Bax collectors this is an exciting disc. In recent years Bax has benefitted from numerous recordings of his music, but here we have nearly seventy eight minutes of Bax songs all receiving their world premiere recordings. More than that, five of the eighteen songs receive their first performances. Collections of Bax songs are not exactly commonplace
- the two main ones, on Continuum and Dutton, were made in 1991 and 2003 respectively. Apart from an odd song or two included in a recital disc, I cannot think of anything else comparable since.
Furthering the value of this new disc is that it is dedicated to the memory of the indefatigable Bax expert Graham Parlett who acted as repertoire consultant for the disc and contributed the typically insightful liner notes. Sadly Parlett passed away in May 2021 having only been diagnosed with motor neurone disease the previous January. This disc is a fitting tribute to the extraordinary amount of work and dedication and academic insight Parlett brought to the continuing promotion of Bax’s music and his catalogue of the composer’s work will be his enduring and valued legacy.
Bax was active across nearly all musical genres except opera. According to Parlett he wrote some 125 original songs of which some 20 are lost. All of these are crammed into the years 1900-1930 with the exception of a single song written in 1943. Of these more than thirty were written before or during his time at the Royal Academy of Music. Usefully the songs given on this CD are presented in chronological order. I cannot imagine always wanting to listen to the full programme at a single sitting but certainly that listening experience is enhanced by a distinct sense of progression and development of the composer’s voice from The Grand Match of 1900 through to Carrey Clavel in 1925.
The performers are baritone Jeremy Huw Williams and pianist Paula Fan. The same artists collaborated for EM Records on a disc of Hubert Parry songs that I have not heard. I must admit I had high hopes for this recital not all of which are fulfilled. The positives are the music, the presentation and Paula Fan’s accomplished and sympathetic accompaniments. The major downside for me is the actual sound of Jeremy Huw Williams’ voice and the technical recording. Williams has a big-sounding voice with a wide range but one that he uses with a wide and obtrusive vibrato applied ubiquitously across it all. When the song has rapidly moving passage work the vibrato obscures the centre of the note Williams is singing. The same vibrato can also blur Williams’ diction so quite often the texts of the songs are not crystal clear – full texts in English only or with an English translation where required are included in the booklet. Williams’ CV is impressive and extensive so clearly others might well respond to his sound and style more than me but I do find this to be a major stumbling block. The disc seems to have been recorded at an unusually high level too – I found myself turning the volume down several notches. This impacts on the dynamic range as recorded and I did find myself wishing for a wider expressive range involving a greater use of quieter dynamics and pared-back vibrato. I understand that individual responses to voices are very personal and subjective but I do find the overall result here to be rather blustery and lacking subtle dramatic point-making. One last qualification – as performed here, quite a number of the songs require Williams to use a kind of head-voice falsetto. This he does very accurately but the tonal contrast is marked and I did wonder if it would have been beneficial to transpose some songs down into a more truly baritone range. Both of the other recital discs mentioned above benefit from using a group of singers with different ranges.
As to the actual songs; there is a great deal of interest here although none are such gems as to supplant the most famous songs in Bax’s catalogue. Certainly the main interest is the sense of growing technical skill and emotional range in Bax’s writing. As an aspiring/published poet himself, he always had an empathy and understanding of word-setting but this is a skilled he honed rather than instinctively possessed. The disc I reviewed immediately before this was of Korngold incidental music written when he was just twenty. Korngold at that age has skills the student Bax could only dream of but it is fascinating to hear how quickly he started acquiring those abilities. So if the 1904 To My Homeland has a slightly quaint drawing room ‘Irish folksong’ feel to it already by I fear thy kisses, gentle maiden from 1906 the sung line is more individual and questing and the harmony of the piano accompaniment richer and more complex. The Viking Battle Song from the previous year is suitably rugged – Wagner quotation and all – this song was brilliantly orchestrated by Graham Parlett and recorded on a Dutton disc [Sea Fever – baritone songs by British Composers Dutton CDLX 7199]. Roderick Williams is the baritone on that disc and quite excellent throughout.
1906 saw another interesting experiment by Bax The Twa Corbies. This is one of two works Bax wrote as ‘recitations’ in the spirit of similar melodramas by Strauss. This really does not work in this performance. Jeremy Huw Williams finds himself caught between the two stools of not singing but not dramatically reciting the text either. The result is a slightly sing-song delivery that reminded me of Vincent Price on Thriller. Worse still the text is a traditional Scots dialect which Williams does not try at all so instead of relishing the accent and its implications we get a very polite ‘proper English’ version which makes no sense at all. Better not to have included this piece. But there are genuine highlights too. A significant part of Bax’s obsession with Ireland sprang not so much from the country itself or its culture but the sense that it lay at the junction between the ‘real’ world and the place beyond. A landscape where the veil could be drawn back and dreams become reality. The song which gives the album its title From the Hill of Dreams is just such a visionary creation and it inspires in the twenty four year old Bax a suitably atmospheric and indeed beautiful setting. Remarkably, the performance on this disc appears to be the song’s first known performance. Quite why a song of this stature should have disappeared until now is a mystery.
As is well-known, before his Celtic Awakening Bax was in the thrall – as were many fellow musicians at the time – of Wagner. Apparently this led him to set several songs in German although the 1911 Das tote Kind [the dead child] is one of the few to still survive. Conrad Ferdinand Meyer’s text is suitably fevered and full of the predictable sleep/sunset/death imagery but Bax sets it with a turbulent accompaniment and a near operatic intensity. Another highlight is the setting of The Splendour Falls which Bax set between 1912-1917. This Tennyson text is much more familiar in its setting by Benjamin Britten in his Serenade for Tenor, Horn & Strings. Initially I thought the earlier Bax setting seemed rather insipid alongside the virile Britten but where Britten emphasised the youthful energy of “wild echoes flying” Bax focuses – again – on “The horns of Elfland faintly blowing....they die in yon rich sky...”. The Bax is a pensively inward looking setting and as such highly effective. Intriguingly Parlett mentions that this was once listed in a group of three orchestral songs but no such version seems to have survived. There follow two French settings that both date from 1920 – a period when Bax’s creativity was reaching its zenith. A Rabelaisian Catechism is an extended song which the liner note likens to a kind of Twelve Days of Christmas ‘list’ song. Williams’ rounded vowels makes it quite hard to decipher the text and the comic nature of the song – highlighted by deliberate quotations from Vaughan Williams’ A Sea Symphony and even a dash of Tristan und Isolde - rather goes for nothing.
The nature of this disc means that Bax collectors and admirers will not rely on the opinions of others but will want to hear the disc for themselves. The rarity of the repertoire is the overwhelming appeal – those seeking a representative cross-section of Bax’s song output would look elsewhere even if the performances here were more compelling. There are some fine settings which underline the fact that Bax could set poetic texts sensitively and effectively. As such this disc is to be welcomed but I would recommend prospective purchasers to sample the disc first to see whether the style of performance appeals more to them than it did to me.
Nick Barnard
Contents
The Grand Match (1903) [4:31]
To my Homeland (1904) [2:43]
Leaves, Shadows and Dreams (1905) [4:23]
Viking-Battle-Song (1905) [3:35]
I fear thy kisses, gentle maiden (1906) [2:07]
The Twa Corbies (1906) [3:57]
Longing (1907) [4:16]
From the Hills of Dreams (1907) [4:17]
Landskab (1908) [5:47]
Marguerite (1909) [4:53]
Das tote Kind ((1911) [2:14]
Welcome, Somer (1914) [2:55]
Of her Mercy (1914) [5:34]
A Leader (1916) [3:32]
The Splendour falls (1917) [5:35]
Le Chant d’Isabeau (1920) [7:25]
A Rabelaisian Catechism (1920) [7:00]
Carrey Clavel (1925) [2:22]
