This is another of the
deleted recordings which Chandos have made available online
as an mp3 recording for £6.
The Sixth Symphony is
an attractive work, though it would be idle to pretend
that it is likely to make the same impact on the listener
as Vaughan Williams’s symphonies, especially the Fourth,
which is almost exactly contemporary with the Bax Sixth. The
Bax is more immediately approachable than the VW, which
is rather hard to take on first hearing, but the VW is
ultimately by far the more memorable.
As so often, however,
we must not let the best blind us to the values of the
very good. Bax was at his creative peak, with the ideas
coming thick and fast – and hot – and if the work is less
coherent than the VW, that is mainly due to the intensity
of the composition. The storm clouds are certainly brewing
in the VW, but we sometimes want bluer skies.
As with other Chandos
downloads of the Bax Symphonies that I have reviewed, I
began by playing through the obvious rival in this price-range,
the Royal Scottish National Orchestra under David Lloyd-Jones
on Naxos (8.557144 – around £5-6 on CD or £4.99 as a download
from classicsonline), a thoroughly recommendable account
and well recorded, with two valuable fillers,
Into the
Twilight and
Summer Music. As with the other
symphonies in this series, anyone who purchases the Naxos
account is likely to be happy with the product – as I have
been for some years now. IL made it Bargain of the Month – see
review – and
RB made it his top recommendation – see
review.
As usual, Lloyd-Jones
comes in noticeably faster in all three movements and his
time overall is four minutes shorter than Thomson. The
obvious inference is that Thomson must be too slow, especially
when the newer Chandos recording under Vernon Handley agrees
with the Naxos – he takes slightly longer than either of
his rivals for the first movement but undercuts both in
the second and equals Lloyd-Jones in the last movement. Though
available on CD only in the box set, on mp3 and lossless
downloads this is available separately – an excellent bargain,
coupled with the Fifth Symphony, for £8.40 (mp3) or £10
(lossless).
Yet, as I have so often
said, tempo alone is not what matters. If a performance
makes sense within its own terms, if it has the necessary
impetus, tempo is of secondary importance. Compare Klemperer’s
mono LP recording of Beethoven’s
Eroica Symphony
with his stereo remake and you will find two very different
interpretations in terms of tempo but both are ultimately
very satisfying because both have a real sense of impulse.
Or compare Karl Richter’s
recordings of the Bach Cantatas – a few of which are still
available on CD, though, sadly, DG appear to have deleted
most of the box sets in which they appeared in the 1990s – with
more recent interpreters such as Gardiner and Koopman and
you will find that, although Richter is regularly slower,
the impetus of his performances means that they still satisfy.
So it is when comparing
Bryden Thomson’s Bax with later interpreters. Play a short
passage from his recording alongside Lloyd-Jones or Handley
in the Building a Library manner and you will probably
prefer the slightly sharper interpretations of the new
recordings. Play the Thomson version of the Sixth Symphony
in its entirety and, unless you go for the whizz-bang*
interpretation automatically, you will find these older
recordings equally recommendable.
Yes, Thomson makes the
music sound episodic – and Bax’s symphonies are undeniably
less tightly structured than those of, say, Vaughan Williams,
who understandably ousted him in popularity – but by lingering
along the road he allows us more time to savour the beauties
of the landscape. There wasn’t a single moment when I
wished he would get a move on. (* I really don’t mean
to imply that either David Lloyd-Jones or Vernon Handley
is a proponent of the whizz-bang school.) Norman del Mar
on Lyrita takes even longer than Thomson in the first two
movements and only slightly undercuts him in the third.
I have already described
the Naxos fillers as valuable. I cannot quite say the
same for the Chandos coupling, the
Festival Overture,
one of the works which Bryden Thomson rescued from neglect. Festive
it certainly is – rather noisily so; I enjoyed hearing
it, but probably wouldn’t want to hear it every time I
play the symphony. It’s a bit too cheerful in its cheerfulness
for me.
As with the other symphonies
in this series, the mp3 sound is perfectly acceptable. I
think I may have wrongly implied in earlier reviews that
all Chandos’s mp3s are at 320kbps, as their newer downloads
are. This recording is not offered at that higher bit-rate
or as a lossless file, but if you are happy with BBC Radio
3 on FM or DAB, you will be equally happy with the 192kbps
sound here. Overall the recording, like the performance,
is marginally less sharp than the Naxos.
The notes by Lewis Foreman,
available as a pdf document which can be printed, are
excellent – as, indeed, are Graham Parlett’s for Naxos. Whichever
version you decide on, the rival version’s notes will be
available to you from the relevant website, free of charge.
If I ultimately lean slightly
towards the Naxos, mainly because of the coupling, the
decision is marginal. Neither recording offers very good
value timewise (57:29 for the Naxos, 55:21 for the Chandos). I
also prefer the stylish cover of the Naxos to Chandos’s
garish orange effort.
Brian Wilson
London Philharmonic
Orchestra/Bryden Thomson 
[55:21] 
