The "new" Bax symphony on Dutton Epoch

[Guest]

I've just bought the new Dutton Epoch recording of Bax's 1907 Symphony, as realised by Martin Yates.
I've loved the Bax symphonies for fifty years now and also much appreciate his early, pre-war orchestral works, sensuous, erotic, lavishly orchestrated.
My first impressions of this reconstructed work were of some disappointment. Yates has done an astonishingly good job , the recording and orchestral playing are fine but the symphony itself has too little of the Bax I know and love. The warmth and harmonic richness of "Into the Twilight" for example , written only a year or so later, is missing, except for a few moments (including some Celtic inflections) in the second movement.
Perhaps the work will "grow" on me and I shall persevere....but so far, I'm unimpressed. Perhaps I was expecting too much. Nevertheless, the project should be given a chance by all Baxians.
Has anyone else listened to this recording?

[Serial_Apologist]

Most British composers of roughly Vaughan Williams's generation were battling with Germanic influences inherited from Parry amd Stanford in their music; Bax OTOH embraced Wagner. I haven't heard this work, which I imagine would be interesting for detecting Bax's influences before Delius and French impressionism impacted.

[Pabmusic]

I have heard this, and I'm rather surprised that anyone might have expected it to be very much different. Bax attended the Royal Academy, which meant that his most immediate influences were Frederick Corder (very Wagnerian) and Alexander Mackenzie (quite Wagnerian), not Parry and Stanford (who ruled the College). (Consider other Academy alumni - Edward German, Granville Bantock, Joseph Holbrooke, York Bowen and Eric Coates ) The early works of most composers hardly represent their most typical, but we do get (usually) flashes of premonition. I think it's great that these things are made available to us.

[Oliver]

What surprised me was not the obvious influences of his teachers on a young man (also heard on the Naxos Holst recording of a few months back) but the huge change between the symphony and "Into the Twilight" which came so soon afterwards.
I agree; we are fortunate to hear this realisation. I hope the recording is successful commercially, as it deserves to be.

[Bax-of-Delights]

I agree Oliver - there's little in this Symphony that would immediately tell you it was Bax if you were listening to it blind. An occasional flash of familiar orchestration hints at what was to come but at 78 minutes its overlong and overwrought. His mainstream symphonies come in at between 31 and 44 minutes and are all the better for it.
I've listened to it twice now and have yet to get a feel for it. Whereas the Martin Yates' realisation of Moeran's 2nd works extremely well at an initial hearing the Bax may take more than a few plays to get a grasp of the structure.

[Roehre]

for a real Bax "no.0" I'd like to point at Spring fire, which is actually also a pre-no.1 symphony as Bax called it "a symphony". Much more Bax in tune and gesture (and of course orchestration) than the Yates orchestrated work.
The Bax symphony in F was object of an earlier thread, btw.

[BBMmk2]

Ah Bax's Spring Fire!! Perhaps my favourite Bax work. And this is about the same time as the symphony?

[Oliver]

Mine too! But I think I've said this before on this forum.......

The saddest moment must be the Epilogue to his Seventh. Many of Bax's epilogues have a sense of valediction and mystery but in his last symphony we are hearing him saying farewell to a lot more than a particular symphonic work. I love those trills on the clarinets and flutes. I'm sure he knew that his muse was leaving him.