Information
Composer: Arnold Bax
- 4 Orchestral Pieces
- Phantasy for viola & orchestra
- Overture, Elegy & Rondo
Philip Dukes, viola
BBC Philharmonic Orchestra
Andrew Davis, conductor
Date: 2014
Label: Chandos
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Composed in Rathgar, Dublin, and powerfully evocative of the County Wicklow landscape, Bax’s Four Orchestral Pieces were first heard in their entirety under Geoffrey Toye in March 1914 at a Queen’s Hall concert. In 1928 Bax overhauled the first three as the Three Pieces for small orchestra, whereas the last of the set, the exquisitely assured and headily voluptuous ‘Dance of Wild Irravel’, all but disappeared from view until Bryden Thomson recorded it with the LPO (also for Chandos, 12/86). After that, Sir Andrew Davis’s new version lacks something in sensual allure. Otherwise, there’s little with which to quibble performance-wise – and there’s absolutely no disputing that Davis’s sumptuously engineered reading of the Overture, Elegy and Rondo (a predominantly sanguine, clean-cut triptych dating from the summer of 1927) trounces the Marco Polo/Naxos rival under Barry Wordsworth (7/88). Drawing some first-rate playing from the BBC Philharmonic, Davis imparts plenty of confident swagger and twinkling fun to both outer movements, just as he is scrupulously attentive to the ear-pricking subtleties of the bewitchingly beautiful, at times ghostly centrepiece.
We’re also treated to the gorgeous Phantasy for viola and orchestra that Bax penned in 1920 for the great Lionel Tertis. The present account is an accomplished one – and certainly finds soloist Philip Dukes in healthy fettle – but the finished article perhaps falls a fraction short in ardour and sweep next to both Vernon Handley’s world premiere recording with Rivka Golani and the RPO (Conifer, 4/89 – nla) and Roger Chase’s stylish partnership with Stephen Bell and the BBC Concert Orchestra (Dutton, 4/13). No matter: for the sake of other two items alone, every Baxian will surely want to investigate this new Chandos survey.
-- Andrew Achenbach, Gramophone
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Arnold Bax (8 November 1883 – 3 October 1953) was an English composer, poet, and author. His prolific output includes songs, choral music, chamber pieces, and solo piano works, but he is best known for his orchestral music. In addition to a series of symphonic poems, he wrote seven symphonies and was for a time widely regarded as the leading British symphonist. In his last years he found his music regarded as old-fashioned, and after his death it was generally neglected. From the 1960s onwards his music was gradually rediscovered, although little of it is regularly heard in the concert hall.
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Andrew Davis (2 February 1944 – 20 April 2024) was an English conductor. He studied at the Royal College of Music and King's College Cambridge, and later at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome with Franco Ferrara. Davis was a keyboardist (piano, harpsichord and organ) for the Academy of St Martin in the Fields from 1966 to 1970. From 1975 to 1988 he was music director of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. Davis was also music director and chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra (1989-2000), the Lyric Opera of Chicago (2000-21), and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (2013-19).
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