Bax - Symphonic Variations; Morning Song

Although Bax has given titles to the Variations they work well without them as the music often dissolves from passionate outbursts into moments of serenity and back again; and the Variations too move into each other without a break. Margaret Fingerhut - a rather underrated pianist - understands the music perfectly and plays with a passionate intensity and sensitive delicacy moving effortlessly between the different moods. Bax's music does not really "sing" to me but this recording almost makes me change my mind!

Setting aside a Dutton release featuring Harriet Cohen Harriet Cohen Plays Bax taken from an off-air broadcast in subfusc sound and a recording by Joyce Hatto that is unknown to me, this 1987 Chandos release was (I think) the first widely-available modern recording of Arnold Bax's "Symphonic Variations". Much more recently, Ashley Wass has set down a recording for Naxos (here, Bax: Symphonic Variations) which is now probably the better buy, but I retain a strong affection for this recording with Margaret Fingerhut with Bryden Thomson and the LPO, perhaps partly because Chandos did so much to advance the cause of Bax's still not very well known music nearly 30 years ago.As the late Peter Pirie noted back in the 1970s, Bax's "Symphonic Variations" reached their final form in 1918. This definitive version was dedicated to Harriet Cohen, who used to cut the work when she played it; she had small hands, and the piano part calls for a stretch of a tenth. Each variation is long enough to make a movement in itself, and after the long theme is exposed, each has a title: "Youth", "Nocturne", "Strife", "The Temple", "Play", "Enchantment" and "Triumph" - seven in all. Their connection with Harriet seems obvious, and their respective titles form a compendium of Bax's prevailing musical styles. This work is so rich and powerful (and so difficult) that it is not so well known as it should be. It lasts around forty-five minutes, and is taxing to listen to until its complex textures unravel and it becomes familiar. Nevertheless, this was the first large-scale work for piano and orchestra written by an Englishman (astonishingly enough), and it remains unchallenged in its field. There have been few, if any, such works written in England since to compare with it; only Frank Bridge's "Phantasm" for piano and orchestra (here, Frank Bridge: Orchestral Works, Vol. 3 [Hybrid SACD]) is a work of comparable mastery. The other large-scale concerto that one thinks of is that of Arthur Bliss; but this is not nearly so original, nor so rich in invention (here,Arthur Bliss: Piano Concerto; Piano Sonata; Concerto for Two Pianos or here, Beethoven - Piano Concerto No. 3/Bliss - Piano Concerto). It sounds like an imitation of the Romantic concertos of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov; Bax's Symphonic Variations are a new kind of work for piano and orchestra, on the most tremendous scale, so far as length, complexity, brilliance and power of orchestration are concerned. They are kin in spirit and in size to the great Piano Concerto of Ferruccio Busoni (here, Busoni: Piano Concerto). No later comparable work by an Englishman is quite on this scale; only the exquisite, delicate, light-weight concerto of John Ireland, a work of poignant beauty which used to be popular but which is now seldom heard, is as realised and inventive (here, Ireland: Piano Concerto (Legend/ Pastoral/ Sea Idyll) or here Ireland - Piano Concerto; Solo Piano Works.).A very worthwhile used purchase and available again from Chandos here Bax: Orchestral Works, Vol. 7.