Bax Spring Fire: “An English Masterpiece” short video talk by Sir Mark Elder.

[BBMmk2]

Ah, this ntakes me back to my Open University course for my music degree!

[Oliver]

Ferneyhoughgeliebte....mea culpa!
I remembered this a few minutes ago, immediately went on line (interrupting Mahler's 1st) to correct it and found you had got there first.
I don't know why, but the mixolydian always seems to have an effect on me. The flattened seventh at the end of the Grieg Concerto is also a magical moment.

Just a semitone; how wonderful is music?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I remembered this a few minutes ago, immediately went on line (interrupting Mahler's 1st) to correct it and found you had got there first.

That happens to me quite a lot, too!

I don't know why, but the mixolydian always seems to have an effect on me. The flattened seventh at the end of the Grieg Concerto is also a magical moment.

Just a semitone; how wonderful is music?

[BBMmk2]

Just a tiny nuance, can make all the difference.

[AjAjAjH]

I heard Mark Elder conduct 'Spring Fire' in Manchester. I enjoyed his introductory talk before he conducted it and it helped me understand it, but I wasn't enthused enough to go out and buy it. But then Bax is not high on my favourite composers list.

[Il Grande Inquisitor]

I reviewed Elder's Hallé recording of Spring Fire for IRR in 2011. I think it's a wonderful performance, if not as tautly managed as Handley. As it's a few years old now, I reproduce the relevant paragraph here:

Meanwhile, Mark Elder and the Hallé Orchestra have enhanced their reputation as the leading interpreters of English music with a terrific on-going Elgar cycle and a series of English orchestral programmes; ‘English Landscapes’ featured Bax’s most familiar tone poem, Tintagel, whereas Spring Fire opens the vernal celebration on the current release. Inspired by Swinburne poem Atalanta in Calydon, Bax composed Spring Fire in 1913, although the composer never heard it performed; the première was postponed due to the outbreak of the Great War; while a Royal Philharmonic Society performance in 1916, conducted by Thomas Beecham, was cancelled due to the score’s difficulty. The work is in five distinct sections, each flowing into the next, and is lushly chromatic, its sprawling narrative running to half an hour. ‘In the Forest before Dawn’ depicts a rain-drenched woodland scene, staccato flute ostinatos rippling over an evocative melody for cellos. The presence of a piano in the orchestra and the string glissandos foreshadow Martinů to some extent. The sun rises onto a Pagan scene, featuring fauns and satyrs, until the violent glare of ‘Full Day’ is heralded, leading onto ‘Woodland Love’, featuring languid solos marked ‘drowsily’ in the score. Elder revels in the mystical atmosphere, more languorous and romantic than Handley, until ‘Maenads’, a boisterous finale in which Pan, Bacchus and their respective revellers indulge in a ‘musical daphnephoria’ (Bax’s own term!). This is spring in its most earthy, passionate eruption, with none of the watercolour pastorals of other English composers. The only clues as to this being a concert recording, prior to the applause at the end, are one or two lapses in ensemble in the finale.

[BBMmk2]

Thank you for that, IGI. I will play both versions and see for myself! I am glad siur Mark is conductoing this but what about other conductors, such as David lloyd Jones, for instance?

[Oliver]

There is something utterly distinctive about Bax's "landscapes"...or , more often seascapes. The epilogues of the 6th and 7th symphonies are particularly effective in this respect; there's something, haunted or magical, something ephemeral....I can't think of another composer who captures anything similar. I find the 7th's particularly moving because, not only was it his last symphony but it was the last of his masterworks. He seemed to know that the flame was dying. And this is reflected in the rather pale music of the decades that followed it.

I often park outside his blue-plaqued Streatham birthplace to do my shopping; it's extraordinary how such an imagination was nurtured in such a humdrum place!

[amateur51]

I confess to being a total neophyte when it comes to Bax's music. I've just listened to the much-praised Spring Fire via our friends in Wiltshire () and I was pleasantly surprised. On first listen it's one to listen to again and it has some delightful moments, so listen again I shall - mabye even buy a recording.

But let's be honest, in terms of evocative orchestral music it's not La Mer, The Sea or even Alassio: In the South is it? Well I haven't come that conclusion ... yet

[BBMmk2]

Well, for me, at least, I totally loved the score from first time I heard it. The sheer orchestration and structure of the score!! :)

[Oliver]

No, amateur51 it isn't...fortunately. I enjoy all those pieces but Spring Fire is different. It's pagan, erotic, wild and sensual. It speaks of a pre-Christian Britain. Sacred forests, faeries, earth-gods. Not Elgar's cup of tea!

[Pabmusic]

No, amateur51 it isn't...fortunately. I enjoy all those pieces but Spring Fire is different. It's pagan, erotic, wild and sensual. It speaks of a pre-Christian Britain. Sacred forests, faeries, earth-gods. Not Elgar's cup of tea!

Oh, I doubt that. Elgar was never a pious Christian - his wife was, and he wouldn't have wanted to upset her. He was probably an unbeliever by the time of his death, which would explain many things, particularly his wish to be cremated and for his ashes to be scattered where the Teme and Severn meet. It was his daughter who persuaded him to agree instead to be buried next to his wife. She too it was who arranged for a priest to give him the last rights, against his doctor's advice - something that was publicly announced, though years later the priest's obituary said he had administered only "such sacraments as he could receive", which has left people speculating just how much the drugged Elgar understood. (Incidentally, this act ensured there would be no burial in Westminster Abbey - the death day saw an undignified scramble that ended when the Dean of Westminster refused permission on the ground that Elgar had been given the Catholic last rites.)

[BBMmk2]

Oh how stupid some people can be!

Well, i have now listened to both, Elder and Handley, and I can see there arer differentces in both approaches. Whilst, Elder seems to be more, hmmm, direct in his approach, maybe because there is a the tempo (in the first movement), slightly slower. which certainly, imo, brings out the mist type of atmosphere.

In all, both versions have their own differences in interpretation and also with the sound worlds that each of these versions create, evoking different aspects of what the composer has in his score.