Bax: Symphony nr. 1

The Guridi symphony rekindled my interest in the soundworld of Arnold Bax, so I gave the latter's First Symphony another audition. I am most familiar with Bax's Second and Third symphonies, which I have been listening to for a long time in the recordings by Bryden Thomson on Chandos. Now I have two complete cycles in my collection, both on Chandos: the Thomson, recorded in the mid-1980s with the London Philharmonic and the set with the BBC Philharmonic led by Vernon Handley which was taped almost 20 years later.

Bax's First has always struck me as an enormously daring statement for a beginning symphonist. Certainly, in 1921 (aged 38) Bax was a mature composer. By then he had a series of symphonic poems under his belt, not to mention the Spring Fire proto-symphony. Still, the expansive and tormented First considerably raised the stakes for the composer. But Bax acquitted himself admirably. It may not rank with the very, very best of 20th century British symphonies (say an Elgar Second, Walton First, RVW's Fourth) but it comes in my opinion very close. Whilst I like Thomson's take on the Second and Third a lot (in general I have a lot of respect for this conductor), I feel he takes a too expansive view on this particular symphony. Comparing timings between the Thomson and Handley sets learns that the former is always slower and considerably so. For the First Handley needs 32' whilst Thomson clocks in just under 37' (the difference is most outspoken in the Third with 41:51 against 49:37). Paradoxically, Thomson's first movement is by far the most unhurried of all three and this seems to me to come across pretty well. It's in the ensuing slow movement - still quite magnificent - that the reading starts to unravel. By the time the finale gets underway I felt a little lost in the overall structure. The rubbish recording may have something to do with it. It's vastly too resonant, compressing 80% of the sonic information in the upper-mid range of the frequency spectrum. Brass ring out splendidly but the lower strings and winds often have difficulty asserting themselves in the overall sound picture. I believe this affects our perception of structural coherence. The Handley recording fares slightly better but the signature is still essentially Chandos. This is why, despite all the obvious qualities of these sets, I am still looking for alternatives. I've heard good things about the 1970s recordings by Myer Fredman and Raymond Leppard on the Lyrita label and I will certainly look into those. There's also the Naxos cycle with the Scottish National Orchestra.

Immediately after listening to Bax's First I revisited the first movement of Guridi's Sinfonia Pirenaica. It's quite obvious the Bax is cut from a different cloth. It's wilder and darker and eschews anything that could be labelled as 'charming'. And when Handley asserts that Bax "is simple structurally; simple formally" it is clear that Guridi's compositional strategies are even more straightforward. Still, the Basque's symphony does not fall flat after the Bax and there is an stylistic kinship between the two.