As on the previous volume in his survey of Bax piano music for Naxos (10/04), Ashley Wass has strong ideas about this repertoire. The Third Sonata of 1926 receives a performance of trenchant individuality and slumbering grandeur which adds over eight minutes to Eric Parkin’s likeable Chandos version, yet Wass’s powers of concentration never waver, and the central Lento moderato captivates with its pellucid songfulness (a pity, though, about the E natural instead of E flat at 0’51” and 8’51”). No matter, Wass’s interpretation makes riveting listening; in my experience, this music’s spiritual kinship with Bax’s then recently completed Second Symphony has never been more potently conveyed.

Cleaner-cut and more Classically orientated than its brooding predecessor, the Fourth Sonata of 1932 can again boast an enchanting slow movement, which Wass surveys with ravishing poise and liquidity. Both outer movements find this gifted pianist in commanding form, and once more his comparatively unhurried approach lends Bax’s concise inspiration a rugged ambition as distinctive as it is revelatory.

The gorgeous main theme of Water Music will be familiar to Baxians as the ‘Dance of Motherhood’ from the 1920 ballet The Truth about the Russian Dancers. Wass imparts a similarly rapt poetic instinct to the darkly turbulent Winter Waters; nor does he miss out on the nonchalant, open-air swagger of Country-Tune. Bringing up the rear is the miniature set of variations on O Dame get up and bake your pies, a typically inventive bonne-bouche written in December 1945 for Julian Herbage and his wife, Anna Instone.

A super disc, this, recorded with striking realism. Roll on Volume 3!