With this issue of the Fifth, Chandos completes its cycle of the seven Bax symphonies conducted by Bryden Thomson and all performed by the London Philharmonic except the Fourth, for which the Ulster Orchestra were used. In addition to the seven symphonic discs, there are six other CDs (one of them conducted by Vernon Handley) which cover 20 other Bax orchestral works, including the Cello Concerto, all the major tonepoems and the magnificent quasi-piano concertos Winter Legends and Symphonic Variations. Curiously, only the Violin Concerto is still missing. With the symphonies Thomson recorded several totally neglected works such as Nympholept and the Dance of Wild Irravel which have substantially widened our knowledge and perspective of Bax's music. It has been a remarkable project and a considerable act of faith on the part of Chandos financially supported by the Sir Arnold Bax Trust. High praise is also due to Lewis Foreman, Bax's biographer, who has provided all the informative, detailed and enthusiastic notes. He is Bax's foremost champion among writers, and even if one cannot always share his views, one salutes the knowledge and insight which govern them and rejoices in the existence of someone ready to enter the lists on behalf of a composer who has few friends among the younger generation of critics.
The enterprise, a brilliant success story for the record industry (and for Chandos's technicians, because the discs are all of a very high standard) nevertheless raises interesting questions, the answers to which are rather depressing. It seems increasingly true, as Professor Alexander Goehr suggested some time ago in his Reith lectures, that certain composers and works are destined to exist almost exclusively on records. Those who admire and want these composers and works will purchase them for their private consumption. But music, especially music written on the large scale Bax employed, is meant to be heard in public.
It used to be said that to record a work was a good way to earn it a public performance, but sadly I have come to believe that this is no longer true, if it ever was. I know that Mahler can be cited, but I am not at all sure he is a valid example. There have certainly been no more public performances of Bax symphonies and tone-poems as a resuit of these recordings' no other orchestras and conductors have seized on Spring Fire, there has been no move to include Symphonic Variations in the Proms. If the BBC did feel moved to include a Bax symphony in the Proms or its winter series in the Royal Festival Hall, I would lay heavy odds on the Third being chosen, whereas either the First or Second might impress present-day audiences much more.
Here I have also to say that my own reaction to the succession of Bax discs has been ambivalent. I am by instinct well disposed to his music, but I cannot avoid the conclusion that for all its undoubted skill, and often inspiration in the matter of scoring, the material is sometimes thin or stretched beyond its natural limits. He really did not know when to stop, it seems, and although I know a similar criticism is often levelled at my beloved Richard Strauss, in his case there seem (at any rate to me) to be compensating structural factors which are absent from Bax. Nevertheless I would not want to register only a negative verdict. My ears have been opened by some of the works to a new appreciation of Bax's qualities, particularly by the Symphonic Variations which seems to me superior to all his symphonies in its invention and its manipulation of form and content. Yet who can fail to be thrilled by the seascape of the Fourth Symphony and taken aback by the violent eruption of the First? It is music that seems to speak to a wide public, and not only to a band of gramophone-bound enthusiasts.
Lewis Foreman, in his notes for this new issue, reminds us that in January 1934, when the Fifth Symphony was first performed under Beecham Bax was the leading British symphonist after Elgar. A year later Vaughan Williams and Walton displaced him with their Fourth and First Symphonies, and he never really recovered. Like VW's Fifth, Bax's is dedicated to Sibelius, to whom there are momentary thematic resemblances in the opening movement. Again, it is the opulence of the scoring, the intermittent visions of some Celtic paradise, sea-swept, rugged, under a wide and stormy sky, that hold the listener's attention rather than the symphonic argument. Thomson conducts with utter conviction and obtains a glowing performance from all sections of the LPO. The Russian Suite comprises orchestrations of two piano works (one the celebrated In a Vodka Shop) written for Dame Myra Hess, with a central Nocturne which has been orchestrated by Graham Parlett. It is attractive light music of a kind that 'serious' composers seem unwilling or unable to write today and therefore all the more welcome.'