Sir Arnold Bax

Started by tjguitar, April 15, 2007, 06:12:44 PM

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vandermolen

#180
Quote from: rubio on April 19, 2008, 11:40:11 AM
How is this Barbirolli 3rd?



Greatest 3rd Symphony of the lot according to most. Terrific and not to be missed. Recorded during World War Two (hence the fine cover design), but Dutton have done wonders with the transfer. Don't like the Violin concerto much. If you like Bax, this is an essential CD.
"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm" (Churchill).

'The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good' (Stanley Kubrick).

J.Z. Herrenberg

Quote from: vandermolen on April 20, 2008, 11:49:11 AM
Greatest 3rd Symphony of the lot according to most. Terrific and not to be missed. Recorded during World War Two, but Dutton have done wonders with the transfer. Don't like the Violin concerto much. If you like Bax, this is an essential CD.

Okay okay, point taken!  ;D

(scribbles furiously on wishlist)
Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything. -- Plato

rubio

Quote from: vandermolen on April 20, 2008, 11:49:11 AM
Greatest 3rd Symphony of the lot according to most. Terrific and not to be missed. Recorded during World War Two (hence the fine cover design), but Dutton have done wonders with the transfer. Don't like the Violin concerto much. If you like Bax, this is an essential CD.

So how does it compare to the excellent Downes/LSO recording interpretation-wise?
"One good thing about music, when it hits- you feel no pain" Bob Marley

Sean

#183
Quote from: Jezetha on April 20, 2008, 03:17:19 AM
How do you square 'possibly Bax's greatest' with 'slow movement certainly isn't as interesting', Sean? Wouldn't that diminish its overall quality? Or is 'interesting' less of a recommendation than 'Dionysian' or 'sensual' however 'diffuse'?

I guess the others make up for it. The overall conception puts the work in an almost unique category; it was composed in conjunction with the love affair with his girl and it's carnality in music. I know it from the Thomson (a Gramophone award winning disc in the 80s?) but I was surprised to find my loyalties to Chandos challenged by Handley's version from a few years back- a very different approach, underlining the swirl and vigour, and glutinous quality...

Sean

The Thomson Third is recommendable, and he's thoroughly inside the Bax idiom in the whole cycle I think: his Sixth is perhaps less well organized and the sound rougher. The Third's opening movement is very brooding and covered in the thick cold haze of coastal islands, and the amazing slow movement luminous and with that sensation of creation ex nihilo and peculiar sectional working.

I bought the Mordkovich recording of the Violin concerto (can't remember if Thomson conducts), coupled with the Golden legend suite.

J.Z. Herrenberg

Quote from: Sean on April 20, 2008, 03:51:10 PM
I guess the others make up for it. The overall conception puts the work in an almost unique category; it was composed in conjunction with the love affair with his girl and it's carnality in music. I know it from the Thomson (a Gramophone award winning disc in the 80s?) but I was surprised to find my loyalties to Chandos challenged by Handley's version from a few years back- a very different approach, underlining the swirl and vigour, and glutinous quality...

I found Handley's to be a very strong performance, too. But I'll have to listen to Thomson again to see how it now compares. Regarding 'carnality in music' - I didn't notice it. If it's there, it isn't adequately sign-posted for me... What that says about you, about me, others must decide! I can generally hear 'sensuality' (in Wagner, Scriabin, Delius, and, yes, Bax). But 'carnality'? The Tannhäuser Bacchanale perhaps... Don't know.
Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything. -- Plato

Sean

C'mon, you're not thinking: that opening movement surges, lurches, delights and blends together in a particularly heady way...

J.Z. Herrenberg

Quote from: Sean on April 20, 2008, 04:02:42 PM
C'mon, you're not thinking: that opening movement surges, lurches, delights and blends together in a particularly heady way...

Perhaps I am thinking too much...  ;)
Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything. -- Plato

Montpellier

Quote from: rubio on April 20, 2008, 01:17:36 PM
So how does it compare to the excellent Downes/LSO recording interpretation-wise?

If I can add tuppenceworth (having the Downes LP which I haven't bothered to convert to a CD), the Downes is a more gentlemanly performance.  It lacks something - the anger isn't as angry so the placid doesn't seem as placid.  The climaxes don't seem as climatic.  I don't know - it has the tempi but doesn't seem to have the drive; all compared with Barbirolli on the Dutton restoration.  It might be a general recording mezzoforte that hangs over the Downes but Barbirolli seems to coax greater dynamic variation.  I haven't put a test meter on them, just an impression. 

Having heard a few recordings of this work I still rate the Barbirolli as getting closer to what Bax wanted (considering they knew each other, too).

J.Z. Herrenberg

Quote from: Anacho on April 21, 2008, 09:51:47 AM
If I can add tuppenceworth (having the Downes LP which I haven't bothered to convert to a CD)

Your tuppenceworth is much appreciated. I remember hearing a fragment of this performance on BBC Radio 4, on a programme called My Music. But that was a long time ago...

It's clear I have to have this!
Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything. -- Plato

vandermolen

Quote from: rubio on April 20, 2008, 01:17:36 PM
So how does it compare to the excellent Downes/LSO recording interpretation-wise?

My own favourite is the Downes but I agree that it is less "urgent" than the Barbirolli version. Downes's is a more reflective performance (a bit like the difference between Boult's two recordings of Vaughan Williams' 9th Symphony). But I grew up with the Downes and that's why I am so attached to it. If you want one version only (and don't mind a historical recording), get the Barbirolli (the Downes is unavailable anyway).
"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm" (Churchill).

'The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good' (Stanley Kubrick).

rubio

Quote from: vandermolen on April 22, 2008, 02:21:11 AM
My own favourite is the Downes but I agree that it is less "urgent" than the Barbirolli version. Downes's is a more reflective performance (a bit like the difference between Boult's two recordings of Vaughan Williams' 9th Symphony). But I grew up with the Downes and that's why I am so attached to it. If you want one version only (and don't mind a historical recording), get the Barbirolli (the Downes is unavailable anyway).

This is what I really loved with the Downes recording, but it will be very interesting to hear Barbirolli.
"One good thing about music, when it hits- you feel no pain" Bob Marley

Sean

Thought I'd mention the Martyn Hill performances of the orchestral songs on Chandos- he has a voice to do justice to the special hues of the language. Originally coupled with the Fifth symphony (and the fantastic job Thomson makes of this, what passion at the end): A Lyke-wake, Eternity, Glamour & Slumber song. I also know The Bard of Dimbovitz from a Handley broadcast I recorded once... As I say though I don't know of any recordings of the dozens of v&pf songs.

vandermolen

Quote from: Jezetha on April 20, 2008, 11:51:52 AM
Okay okay, point taken!  ;D

(scribbles furiously on wishlist)

Yeah, get on with buying it! ;D
"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm" (Churchill).

'The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good' (Stanley Kubrick).

J.Z. Herrenberg

From Graham Parlett's review of Handley's second instalment of Bax's Tone Poems (http://musicweb.uk.net/bax/tone0408.htm):

The next work on the disc is The Happy Forest, a ‘Nature-Poem’ composed in 1914 after an Arcadian prose-poem by Herbert Farjeon but not orchestrated for another ten years. It is the only published work on the disc (full score from Murdoch, 1925, now Warner Chappell) and provides a contrast to its companions, being in effect a scherzo and trio. The outer sections are full of lively woodwind and string figurations, suggesting the fantastic denizens of the forest cavorting merrily (or lasciviously) in the sunlight, while the slow middle section is not unlike the ‘Woodland Love’ movement of its near-contemporary, Spring Fire (1913). The work was first recorded by Edward Downes with the LSO nearly forty years ago, in January 1969 (RCA label, coupled with the Third Symphony), and it remains my favourite performance, lively in the outer sections and with the middle section taken at a slower pace than in any other version but with really sensitive playing from the LSO; a pity that it has never been reissued on CD, though I have heard rumours that this may yet happen. Then came Bryden Thomson’s recording for Chandos, which is slower than Downes’s in the outer parts but faster in the middle, and finally David Lloyd-Jones recorded it for Naxos, taking the opening (marked ‘Vivacious and fantastic’) at a cracking pace. Handley, in contrast, plays the first section more slowly than any of the other conductors, and I confess to finding it rather heavy-footed and lacking in sparkle. The third section, which repeats much of the material in modified form, is slightly quicker, but the preceding slow middle section is taken at a surprisingly fast pace, which for me spoils the enchanted atmosphere that Bax was trying to create. Nevertheless, the dance music is strong rhythmically, and with such an experienced conductor at the helm there cannot fail to be many points of interest along the way.


I feel vindicated in feeling for more than three decades that Downes really did The Happy Forest proud... And on another point: is Graham Parlett influenced by our very own Vandermolen in thinking the Downes record could be reissued on CD? Or does he know something we don't know?
Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything. -- Plato

J.Z. Herrenberg

Thanks to a friend who has given me an eMusic account for three months (yummy!), I have just downloaded and listened to Handley's performance of The Happy Forest. As Vandermolen rightly pointed out, the difference between Handley and Downes is between the 'legendary' and the 'dreamy' approach. Handley, as ever, doesn't like to let things drag, he is on the move - the effect is as if you are listening to someone excitedly telling you about The Happy Forest. In the middle section there is no languor, everything flows on, as if the story musn't be interrupted. Downes, on the other hand, makes you a part of the experience, there is no distancing. You're inside the frame, as it were.

Well, that's what I make of it...

I think both approaches are valid. And the sheer sound of the Handley is superb!
Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything. -- Plato

vandermolen

Quote from: Jezetha on April 24, 2008, 07:03:40 AM
Thanks to a friend who has given me an eMusic account for three months (yummy!), I have just downloaded and listened to Handley's performance of The Happy Forest. As Vandermolen rightly pointed out, the difference between Handley and Downes is between the 'legendary' and the 'dreamy' approach. Handley, as ever, doesn't like to let things drag, he is on the move - the effect is as if you are listening to someone excitedly telling you about The Happy Forest. In the middle section there is no languor, everything flows on, as if the story musn't be interrupted. Downes, on the other hand, makes you a part of the experience, there is no distancing. You're inside the frame, as it were.

Well, that's what I make of it...

I think both approaches are valid. And the sheer sound of the Handley is superb!

Totally agree with you. Interesting that a Musicweb reviewer mentioned a possible reissue of the Downes (would be great) as the Music web put in a disclaimer after I had reported back what Caracacus Downes (maybe a relative of Edward's  ;D)had said about tentative negotiations for a reissue (see Music web bulletin board).
"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm" (Churchill).

'The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good' (Stanley Kubrick).

tjguitar

Not sure if this link will work:

http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/Arnoldbax/message/1154

but Richard Adams wrote a message about Naxos new recording of Symphonic Variations by James Judd,Bournemouth Symphony and Ashley Wass, where he attended the sessions of.

J.Z. Herrenberg

Quote from: tjguitar on May 26, 2008, 10:55:24 PM
Not sure if this link will work:

http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/Arnoldbax/message/1154

but Richard Adams wrote a message about Naxos new recording of Symphonic Variations by James Judd,Bournemouth Symphony and Ashley Wass, where he attended the sessions of.

The link doesn't work, because a) you must have a Yahoo account (which I have) and then have b) Web Access (which I haven't). Couldn't you cut and paste it?
Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything. -- Plato

tjguitar

Quote from: Jezetha on May 26, 2008, 11:04:27 PM
The link doesn't work, because a) you must have a Yahoo account (which I have) and then have b) Web Access (which I haven't). Couldn't you cut and paste it?

I guess:


QuoteHello all...

I've just returned from Poole, England where I was fortunate to
attend the sessions of Ashley Wass's recordings of the Bax's
Symphonic Variations (SV) and the Left-Hand Concertante for Naxos
with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra conducted by James
Judd. The recordings took place over two days and all involved were
in absolute top-form. Those familiar with Wass's leisurely
recordings of the Bax Piano Sonatas will be in for a surprise as his
interpretations of both the Symphonic Variations and Left-Hand
Concertante were extremely urgent and muscular. While his playing of
the SV contains much of the poetry of Margaret Fingerhut's fine
interpretation on Chandos, his version is much more powerful and
concise and as a result, his Symphonic Variations comes off as a much
more virtuosic and involving piece, at least to my ears. He was
wonderfully supported by James Judd, who kept things moving but at
the same time never underplayed the work's grand gestures or delicate
lyricism. Judd told me that his experience conducting Bax is minimal
but he thoroughly enjoyed conducting the SV and Concertante and plans
to go back and study the symphonies more carefully as he now
recognizes Bax to be a very major composer.

The Left-Hand Concertante also benefited from the taut playing of
Wass and the very passionate playing of the Bournemouth
Orchestra. All were very moved by Wass's interpretation of the
immensely moving middle movement of that concerto, which may be the
last great music Bax ever composed -- his final testament and
expression of affection for all that Harriet Cohen had meant to him
throughout the years. Again, Wass and Judd seemed to emphasize the
intense emotion of the the music even more than Handley and Fingerhut
in their fine Chandos recording.

The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra deserves special praise as they
were reading from photocopies of Bax's original manuscripts. The
existing parts are a mess and it's a travesty that works of this
significance have never been published. We can never expect public
performances of Symphonic Variations, Left-Hand Concertante, Winter
Legends or any number of Bax's most important works until these
scores are published or made available in printed copies.

This Naxos disc should be released next year. I feel safe
predicting that Wass's new recording of the Symphonic Variations will
be recognized as the definitive edition upon release and more
importantly, I predict critics will be asking why this amazing music
remains so little know in the concert hall. Quite honestly, I had
never considered Bax's Symphonic Variations to be among his better
works but hearing Wass and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra play it
last week, my opinion has changed dramatically. I now regard it as
one of Bax's most important masterpieces and I want to thank Mr.
Wass, Mr. Judd and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra for changing
my opinion of this great work through their inspired and dedicated playing.

Richard R. Adams
www.arnoldbax.com