Bax Symphony in F

[Alan Howe]

Thanks. Can't wait - but will have to....

[Paul Barasi]

is this in Composers and Music because it isn't a New Recording ... yet?

[Alan Howe]

Tapiola reports elsewhere:
I can say it is a wonderful concoction of Straussian/Irish romantic swurls and themes were used in many future Bax works. You'll hear Irish folk-song coupled with Tchaikovskian emotion. Bax was 23 when he wrote it and was in love with every pretty girl in London under age 25.
He realized that a 60-minute symphony with a huge orchestra by an unknown 23 year old would never be performed in London, so he stopped at the short score and moved on to other conquests.
Martin Yates has not added a note of his own and taken Bax's orchestral comments and made a performing version. It's not a reconstruction like Elgar's 3rd or Moeran's 2nd.

[Mark Thomas]

Sounds like an intriguing must-buy to me.

[musiclover]

Yes, me too. I phoned Dutton, but tight lips all round. I suppose it will be an important coup if it really does come through.

[BFerrell]

Dutton is NOT going to comment yet. I was reminded today not to talk about it just yet. 
I know the symphony is very long and there will be no disc mate. The editing process is not finished and Yates has not given it the green light yet.
Patience is a virtue.

[musiclover]

ok, thanks for that info. I can't help trying to jump the gun!

[chill319]

If Bax's 1908 String Quintet is any indicator, the symphony could be as fine an addition to his list of symphonies as Kullervo is to Sibelius's. The ease with which Bax moves in and out of contrapuntal textures in the Quintet bespeaks a composer whose craft, if not his voice, is fully mature, and whose musical ideas are already arresting.

In case any members of this forum who like Bax have not yet heard the Somm recording of the 1939 Concertino for Piano and Orchestra, completed by Graham Partlett, I'll opine that for me it is, apart from the final Cooke/Mahler 10th, the finest such work I have ever heard.

[eschiss1]

Thank you for that recommendation. I will need to have a lookout for that one...
I have long admired the Parletts' work on Bax's behalf.

[chill319]

Partlett outdid himself here. I defy anyone but the most erudite scholar of Bax's works to detect Partlett in the result. One of the interesting aspects of the Concertino is that it uses great thick two-handed chords much more than earlier Bax concerted piano works. In this respect it sounds as if the textures of Vaughan Williams's then-recent Piano Concerto had intrigued Bax. Assuming that a recording of the Symphony in F is forthcoming (ahem), it will likewise be interesting to compare the 1907 Bax with the Vaughan Williams of the Overture to The Wasps, Toward the Unknown Region, etc.