Arnold Bax - Violin Concerto; etc. (Lydia Mordkovitch; Bryden Thomson)

Information

Composer: Arnold Bax

• Concerto for Violin and Orchestra
• A Legend, symphonic poem
• Romantic Overture
• Golden Eagle, incidental music

Lydia Mordkovitch, violin

London Philharmonic Orchestra

Bryden Thomson, conductor

Date: 1991

Label: Chandos

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Review

Bax's Violin Concerto has a curious history. It was written in 1937–8 for Heifetz, who didn't want it—not surprisingly, for it doesn't sound like a Heifetz work. So Bax put it away for five years while Walton's and Britten's concertos appeared and were successful and then sent it to Eda Kersey, who gave the first performance with Sir Henry Wood. I heard it and can still recall the superb playing of the soloist, who died aged 40 the following year. Does anyone remember her?

There is poignancy about this recording, for it marks the end of the late Bryden Thomson's valiant championship of Bax's orchestral music for Chandos. He conducts a mellow, affectionate performance of the Concerto, an attractive work, more lightly scored than much of Bax and with an unusually shaped first movement entitled ''Overture, Ballad and Scherzo'' which is almost a miniature concerto in itself. The adagio which follows combines Elgarian wistfulness with Baxian lushness and the finale contrasts a jolly rondo section with a seductive waltz. Lydia Mordkovitch plays the solo part with real flair and richness of tone and seems to me to bring poetic and romantic feelings to the work similar to those of its first interpreter.

A Legend is the last of Bax's 22 symphonic-poems, a last and I fear vain attempt to recapture the power and beauty of his Tintagel. All the familiar Bax fingerprints are there—colourful scoring, evocation of wind and waves and 'battles long ago'—but in spite of the stirring advocacy of Thomson and the LPO, it sounds rather like a last fling and deteriorates into an empty march-like finale. The disc is completed by six items of incidental music Bax wrote in 1945 for his brother Clifford's play Golden Eagle, about Mary, Queen of Scots. As always in the Chandos Bax series, the recording is exemplary.

-- Gramophone

More reviews:
https://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2000/oct00/baxviolin.htm

https://www.amazon.com/Bax-Violin-Concerto-Romantic-Overture/dp/B000000AO9

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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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Bax

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Lydia Mordkovitch (30 April 1944 – 9 December 2014) was a Russian violinist. She studied at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory under David Oistrakh, later serving as his assistant. During this period, she won the National Young Musicians Competition in Kiev in 1967 and the Marguerite Long-Jacques Thibaud Competition in Paris in 1969. She settled permanently in the UK in 1980. Mordkovitch recorded for RCA Red Seal and Chandos. She was featured in over 60 recordings for Chandos, including works of J.S. Bach, Ami Maayani, Shostakovich and English composers such as Bax, Alwyn, Bliss, Howells, and John Veale.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lydia_Mordkovitch

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Bryden Thomson (16 July 1928 – 14 November 1991) was a Scottish conductor. He studied at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music, then with Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt at the Hochschule für Musik in Hamburg, and with Igor Markevitch at the Mozarteum University of Salzburg. Thomson is remembered especially for his championship of British and Scandinavian composers. His recordings include influential surveys of the orchestral music of Hamilton Harty and Arnold Bax. He was principal conductor of several British orchestras, including the Ulster Orchestra, which flourished under his tenure.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryden_Thomson

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