Orch Works; V.3: November Wood

Along with their new release of the symphonies come these reissues of orchestral works, repackaged and recombined (in order to complement rather than compete with the new Handley release, I assume). Volume 3 provides us with some of his most tone poems.

November Woods and The Happy Forest present, as the titles might imply, different aspects of Bax' ability to depict nature in its various forms and moods. They are indeed atmospheric works, the former bleak and dark, the latter rustic and sunny, but with more than a touch of Baxian mysticism. These are indeed vintage Bax, more so than the Delian Summer Music.

The Garden of Fand and Tintagel are possibly the most famous of his 22 symphonic poems, and they are both arguably masterpieces. The Garden of Fand is deeply steeped in influences from Celtic mythology, enhanced by impressionistic effects. It is quite simply a glorious work. Tintagel, perhaps his most famous piece, draws instead on King Arthur, and is more Wagnerian than impressionist (though reminiscences of Debussy are not that hard to detect).

Bryden Thomson and the Ulster orchestra play these works at least as well as Lloyd-Jones on Naxos and indeed there isn't much to distinguish them from the newer set under Vernon Handley. Sound quality is excellent, too. Strongly recommended.

There are several options when it comes to the Bax tone poems, including recordings from Boult, Handley, Lloyd-Jones and Thomson, and all of them are at least very good. Boult's pioneering Lyrita disc is a long-time favorite recorded in excellent stereo sound (Boult conducts Bax), and I would recommend it as a very solid choice. Boult authoritatively covers what are, in my view, the strongest of Bax's works in this category: the first of the three Northern Ballads, Mediterranean, The Garden of Fand, Tintagel, and November Woods.

Vernon Handley, a Baxian of great distinction as established by his top notch cycle of the symphonies, offers all three of the Northern Ballads, Into the Twilight, The Happy Forest, Red Autumn, Nympholept, In the Faery Hills, November Woods, The Garden of Fand and Sinfonietta on two Chandos cd's (Arnold Bax: Tone Poems and Bax: Tone Poems, Volume 2). These discs offer fine performances by the BBC Philharmonic, and are considered the latest word in Bax given the conductor's credentials and the 2005-2007 recording dates.

Then we have this disc of Bryden Thomson's recordings which date from 1982 and 1983. While Thomson's recordings of the symphonies came on the heels of several classic Lyrita recordings from the likes of Norman Del, Myer Fredman and Raymond Leppard, he nevertheless proved to be a Baxian of great distinction who most effectively communicated the atmospheric vs the dramatic in Bax's music. His reading of the Third symphony is representative in this respect. For this reason, his recordings of the tone poems, which are essentially atmospheric pieces, are among the best I've heard. He presents the brooding and mysterious elements in these wonderful scores in a way like no other, all recorded in excellent sound.

If I were to recommend a starting place for those who are new to the symphonic music of Arnold Bax, I would pick this disc and/or Thomson's recording of the Third symphony (Symphony 3 / Dance of Wild Irravel).

To call this `English light music' is in no way intended to be derogatory. There are four `easy-listening' symphonic studies here reflecting moods of nature by the relatively little-heard English composer Arnold Bax. For more than a decade Bax was `Master of the King's Music'. Bax was a brilliant pianist and wrote many compositions for the piano, but it is his orchestral music we hear most often, probably because of its accessibility to the listener, even on first hearing. The four pieces here are November Woods, The Happy Forest, The Garden of Fand (inspired by the folk legends of Ireland as much as by the sight and sound of the Atlantic Ocean crashing on the western shoreline), Summer Music (inspired by a hot windless day in the woodland of southern England) and Tintagel (a village on the northern Atlantic shore of Cornwall and asociated with the legend of King Arthur and the Round Table). This CD on which the music is played by the Ulster Orchestra conducted by Bryden Thomson is an excellent place to start if you don't know Bax's music.