Bax: Symphonic Variations [CD]

Despite recent pioneering efforts by several recording companies, especially Chandos and Naxos, to promote the music of Sir Arnold Bax, most of today's music-lovers and concert-goers remain largely unaware of this English composer, whose music was much better known during the first half of the twentieth century. Audiences are notoriously fickle; Mahler, largely shunned during his life, suddenly came into vogue around 1960, and his popularity today remains undiminished. After their deaths, Elgar, Sibelius, and Vaughan Williams were forgotten; today, happily, concert performances include their music. The lamentably long list of composers consigned to obscurity or oblivion even before they died includes Bax.
Many who recognize Bax's name can probably recall only one work - his symphonic poem "Tintagel," a wonderfully evocative portrait of the sea. That today's concert-goers are so unaware of Bax's music is indeed sad, because he wrote in a late-Romantic and thoroughly approachable though admittedly often complex style. Though Bax was a pianist with a commanding style, he chose to compose, rather than concertize. His personal life affected his compositions; he deserted his family and had a long, passionate love affair with the pianist Harriet Cohen, for whom he wrote several compositions for piano and orchestra. Harriet eventually discovered that he also had a second mistress; one can only imagine her reaction to that revelation!
Both "Symphonic Variations" and "Concertante for Piano (Left Hand)," which Bax wrote for Harriet after she had injured her right hand, are available on other CDs, but not coupled together, as on this CD, which, being budget-priced, offers formidable competition to earlier recordings. The performances are excellent and the sound is clear with good balance between soloist and orchestra. Strongly recommended for those willing to explore Bax's music and wanting these two works on one CD.

The Symphonic Variations, which dates from 1918, was the first of five works that Arnold Bax wrote for piano and orchestra. It has an interesting history in that it was written for Bax's lover, Harriet Cohen, who was a fine pianist, but was limited by small hands and webbed fingers. She gave the premier performance in 1920, however, since she had difficulty with some of the writing, Bax revised the score to suit her. Cohen had exclusive performance rights to the work, but the score was damaged when her house was bombed in 1940, thus ending the possibility of further performances. Fortunately, the original score was reconstructed from a complete set of parts that surfaced in the 1960's after which recordings were made by Joyce Hatto with Vernon Handley in 1970 (nla), and Margaret Fingerhut with Bryden Thomson in 1987 (Bax: Orchestral Works, Vol. 7). This recording by Ashley Wass, the first to appear in over twenty years, is a statement about the ongoing revival of interest in the music of Arnold Bax and the enterprising producers at Naxos, who continue to mine a rich vein of British music from the last century.

To call the Symphonic Variations rhapsodic is an understatement - it's a massive, sprawling thing, which at nearly 46 minutes is the longest work Bax wrote for orchestra. It's not a piano concerto and despite its name is not a set of variations either; it's a series of eight loosely connected atmospheric sketches bearing titles such as Youth, Nocturne, Strife and Enchantment which, as Lewis Foreman observes in his liner notes, "have never been satisfactorily explained." The Symphonic Variations was written during a period of domestic discord in Bax's life (he was soon to leave his wife for Harriet Cohen), and while the passion for Harriet undoubtedly found its way into the music, as did the events of the Great War, the knowledge of this is a footnote when it comes to appreciating the music. It's written in the inimitable language of the composer, with bold strokes, voluptuous in places against a canvas of Baxian "northernness." The music takes it's time to get "somewhere," if anywhere at all, the real destination being the world of sound and impressions. It takes some patience to appreciate this work, which in some ways is too much of a good thing.

The Concertante for Piano (1949) was also written for Harriet Cohen, under rather unusual circumstances. Apparently after the death of Bax's long-estranged wife, Harriet expected that the composer would finally marry her; however, upon learning from Bax that he had another mistress, she dropped a tray of drinks, injuring her right wrist. As a result Bax wrote the Concertante, which is for the left hand, for her. While it makes for a pleasant filler, it's a mere afterthought compared to the weighty Symphonic Variations.

My introduction to the Symphonic Variations was through the Fingerhut recording on Chandos, which I think is a good one. It also has the advantage of coming in a budget two disc set along with Winter Legends, a Bax work for piano and orchestra that outshines the Symphonic Variations. The Wass recording is a very good one too, and given that he has recorded Winter Legends along with the Saga Fragment and Morning Song (to be released in 2011) prospective purchasers might consider picking up the current disc and waiting for Naxos to issue the new one.

Recommended.