Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Martin Yates (conductor)
DUTTON CDLX7308
On this morning's CD Review William Mival was honest enough to admit that he wasn't really the person to be talking about this issue, as he wasn't a great admirer of Bax. One can only agree with him: he should have left it to someone who had a firmer idea what she/he was listening to, and his description of Bax as a "cherry cake" composer who wrote too much and too sloppily is about a couple of generations out of date. Just as well Tod Handley isn't still around to have heard such old-fashioned nonsense!
If I may add my own, short gloss for anyone interested in hearing this disc, and who might have been put off by Mr Mival's bucket of condescendingly cold water....
The Symphony in F has been orchestrated from Bax's 1907 1-piano short score. There are a handful of (generally generic) indications of scoring pencilled into the manuscript, such as "brass", "wind" or "pizz."; and at one point a piccolo phrase actually written out above the two staves. Mr Mival was quite wrong to suggest that Bax wrote all his symphonies out in short score and then orchestrated them if anybody came up with a performance offer. The 1st Symphony started as a Piano Sonata, which Bax realised had got too big for its boots, so the "short score" there has a special importance; but the later symphonies were all commissions, for which the short scores (heavily marked up with instrumentation) are working manuscripts, not hopeful first thoughts.
The 1907 symphony sounds absolutely nothing like mature Bax (as may well have been apparent from the extracts played) though Mr Mival rather implied that it does. The reason Bax didn't score it was that he himself was dissatisfied with its form and extreme length. To that extent we're listening to something that the composer would not have wanted us to hear; although Martin Yates has certainly done a good job in scoring it with appropriate forces, in Bax's early manner - though occasionally with a suspicion of too much (and too Teutonic) a hand with the brass and woodwind.
Which brings me to my main point of disagreement with the R3 reviewer. There is nothing at all "Celtic" in sound about this symphony, and not very much that reflects German music either, except for its fashionably "mega-symphonic" ambition. What strikes one on hearing it, is that Bax was very much working through the potent (and liberating) Russian influences on his work, such as Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazunov: the passage which Mr Mival neatly, and rather bafflingly, compared to Strauss's Salome is in fact much more reminiscent of a passage in Rimsky's Mlada, as to harmony and rhythms - it's Yates's orchestration which reflects the Dance of the Seven Veils!
The first three movements hold up amazingly well, with strong, surprisingly angular thematic content in the first and third, and an ardent lyricism in the second which is closest to his later style. They are pretty well structured, with powerful climaxes growing naturally and organically from the ever-transforming material (I don't think Mival understands Baxian structures, as he seems fixated on German sonata form!) and only the last movement outstays its welcome. The thematic content of that last movement is also notably weaker than the remainder, as Bax himself was only too aware.
I agree with the R3 reviewer that there is an understandably tentative feel to the recorded performance, though this was not down to a lack of rehearsal time in Glasgow - Dutton were most generous with that. But one can hardly expect a hitherto unplayed 80 minute work to go easily on its first outing.
In a nutshell, Yates's orchestral embodiment of the Symphony in F is an intriguing work for Baxians and all lovers of English music. It hardly fits with Bax's later work, but is rather a "study symphony" pointing towards a path he chose *not* to take. Still, in itself it offers plenty of intense, lyric fire which is well worth hearing on its own merits.
DUTTON CDLX7308
On this morning's CD Review William Mival was honest enough to admit that he wasn't really the person to be talking about this issue, as he wasn't a great admirer of Bax. One can only agree with him: he should have left it to someone who had a firmer idea what she/he was listening to, and his description of Bax as a "cherry cake" composer who wrote too much and too sloppily is about a couple of generations out of date. Just as well Tod Handley isn't still around to have heard such old-fashioned nonsense!
If I may add my own, short gloss for anyone interested in hearing this disc, and who might have been put off by Mr Mival's bucket of condescendingly cold water....
The Symphony in F has been orchestrated from Bax's 1907 1-piano short score. There are a handful of (generally generic) indications of scoring pencilled into the manuscript, such as "brass", "wind" or "pizz."; and at one point a piccolo phrase actually written out above the two staves. Mr Mival was quite wrong to suggest that Bax wrote all his symphonies out in short score and then orchestrated them if anybody came up with a performance offer. The 1st Symphony started as a Piano Sonata, which Bax realised had got too big for its boots, so the "short score" there has a special importance; but the later symphonies were all commissions, for which the short scores (heavily marked up with instrumentation) are working manuscripts, not hopeful first thoughts.
The 1907 symphony sounds absolutely nothing like mature Bax (as may well have been apparent from the extracts played) though Mr Mival rather implied that it does. The reason Bax didn't score it was that he himself was dissatisfied with its form and extreme length. To that extent we're listening to something that the composer would not have wanted us to hear; although Martin Yates has certainly done a good job in scoring it with appropriate forces, in Bax's early manner - though occasionally with a suspicion of too much (and too Teutonic) a hand with the brass and woodwind.
Which brings me to my main point of disagreement with the R3 reviewer. There is nothing at all "Celtic" in sound about this symphony, and not very much that reflects German music either, except for its fashionably "mega-symphonic" ambition. What strikes one on hearing it, is that Bax was very much working through the potent (and liberating) Russian influences on his work, such as Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazunov: the passage which Mr Mival neatly, and rather bafflingly, compared to Strauss's Salome is in fact much more reminiscent of a passage in Rimsky's Mlada, as to harmony and rhythms - it's Yates's orchestration which reflects the Dance of the Seven Veils!
The first three movements hold up amazingly well, with strong, surprisingly angular thematic content in the first and third, and an ardent lyricism in the second which is closest to his later style. They are pretty well structured, with powerful climaxes growing naturally and organically from the ever-transforming material (I don't think Mival understands Baxian structures, as he seems fixated on German sonata form!) and only the last movement outstays its welcome. The thematic content of that last movement is also notably weaker than the remainder, as Bax himself was only too aware.
I agree with the R3 reviewer that there is an understandably tentative feel to the recorded performance, though this was not down to a lack of rehearsal time in Glasgow - Dutton were most generous with that. But one can hardly expect a hitherto unplayed 80 minute work to go easily on its first outing.
In a nutshell, Yates's orchestral embodiment of the Symphony in F is an intriguing work for Baxians and all lovers of English music. It hardly fits with Bax's later work, but is rather a "study symphony" pointing towards a path he chose *not* to take. Still, in itself it offers plenty of intense, lyric fire which is well worth hearing on its own merits.
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