Arnold BAX (1883-1953)
London Pageant (1937)
Concertante for cor anglais, clarinet, horn and orchestra (1948-9)
Suite from Tamara (1911)
Cathaleen-ní-Hoolihan (1903)
Gillian Callow (cor anglais);
John Bradbury (clarinet); Jonathan Goodall (French horn)
BBC Philharmonic Orchestra/Martyn Brabbins
rec Studio 7, BBC, Manchester, 17 May 23 June 2000 DDD
CHANDOS CHAN 9879
[74.33]
Crotchet
Amazon
UK
Amazon
US
Have we all come to take Chandos for granted? Their dedication to the Bax
cause is unique. Single-handedly they have populated the catalogue with all
the symphonies, all the concertos, and most of the orchestral and chamber
music. Nor has this happened in a great rush. You can look back to the very
early days of CD (1983, ... how soon we forget) and a little beyond to find
the company's Bax Fourth and the first collection of tone poems all extremely
well directed by Bryden Thomson with the wonderful Ulster Orchestra (heir
to the cuts-slain BBC Northern Ireland Orchestra). Their version of the Fourth
is as much a reference as Norman Del Mar's Sixth on Lyrita (still impatiently
awaiting reissue) and Myer Fredman's Second Symphony (also awaiting the same
attention).
Bax takes up several pages in the current Chandos catalogue and this disc,
with Brabbins (a more familiar figure on Hyperion) directing, valuably repairs
some gaps in the Bax discography.
London Pageant is not even second drawer Bax but it speaks
volumes that I succumb so easily to its bombastic ceremonial brilliance.
Hardly the 'shatteringly apt displays of pomp and circumstance' by which
Edward Greenfield described the two Walton Coronation marches but by no means
worthless either. It probably goes on too long and cannot hold even a guttering
candle to the contemporaneous Walton Crown Imperial. Worth the odd
airing and to be compared, I would say, with the raucous Rosc-Catha
with glorious rasping and rolling trumpet legatos in the final pages. File
with the as yet unrecorded Work-In-Progress Overture.
The Pageant is from just past Bax's high maturity and the final shudders
of the Seventh Symphony. The Concertante (why that name for
this work and for the Left-Hand piano work - why not Concerto?) is from late
on in his career written for a Henry Wood Memorial concert conducted by Sargent.
The work is retrospective and nostalgic and recollections of Wood's championing
of the Third Symphony might well have been in the composer's mind. The three
instruments each have a solo role in the first three movements, all coming
together in the finale.
The cor anglais is associated with Sibelius's Swan of Tuonela (try
8.19) and that, together with other Grez-inflected Delian ideas, are to be
heard. There is a break for a truculent little march of the Rosc-Catha
type. At 7.49 the composer quotes from the Third Symphony. The Clarinet
scherzo spins and skips along with the Slavonic zest of Troika and
In a Vodka Shop. A more plaintive note (clearly linking to the 1930s
clarinet sonata) is struck in the allegretto semplice. Nice to see
John Bradbury's name and to hear him again. I cherish memories of his
BBCSO broadcasts of the Mozart Concerto and the Stanford. The horn
lento is nostalgic but lacks indelibility despite the feeling with
which it is imbued by the soloist and the orchestra. The finale rollicks
along in rustic charm and delicacy. The music has more to do with the lighter
Bax (e.g. Three Orchestral Pieces) than the emotional crises of the
Sixth Symphony. The natural-sounding recording is free from the stifling
density that clouds the success of the Chandos First and Second Symphonies.
Graham Parlett (a long-time supporter of Bax to whom I owe a great debt for
his unrewarded kindness in introducing me to so many Bax works on tape back
in the late 1970s and early 1980s) has done astounding things with the music
from Tamara. There are far more movements (thirty, in fact) in piano
score than the five here. The ballet was written with a speculative view
to performance by Karsavina in Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. Bax had always
had a predilection for Russian romanticism (witness the Russian Easter
Festival quote in the Third Symphony, the various explicitly Russian
pieces, his passionate pursuit to the Ukraine, the gaudy splendour of his
Fifth Symphony etc). The Prelude is dark and jaunty - dark as in Balakirev
and jaunty as in Mussorgsky's operatic dances. Properly the whole work should
be orchestrated - something Bax never did. The shape of the theme in the
Prelude at 5.05 follows the outline of the great melody in Rimsky-Korsakov's
Antar Symphony. The Dance of the Water Spirits is pure light
fantasy and the clarinet decoration is wildly Rimskian. The convulsive drum
and tambourine-goaded abandon is from Prince Igor. The Enchanter's Palace
shares some of Kastchei's dread and the staccato Dance of the Slaves
is castanet-punctuated. The gently coaxing Naiads prepares
the ground for the blacker rites of the Hunt and Apotheosis. At the
height of the Apotheosis Bax releases a tune of great span to vie
with Fand.
Cathaleen is from yet earlier and, while not fully formed Bax, a not
inconsiderable theme the envy of many a more prominent composer, is to be
heard. The tone poem is from his earliest and truest Celtic twilight days.
If the work lacks toughness it is fresh and has about it an oxymoronic quiet
triumph associated with the artistically and politically emergent Eire. These
were the days when Bax counted the poetry of Yeats as superior to all the
music ever written.
A warm and well imagined collection, then, with everyone up to their highest
standards. Not the place to start your Bax collection, certainly, but far
more rewarding than Baxians might have feared. Any disappointment will not
be down to Chandos, the artists or Lewis Foreman whose notes are a pleasurably
welcome fixture. More Bax please. How about a disc including the immature
tone poems such as A Song of War and Victory?
Rob Barnett
See also review by Simon Jenner
