Bax: Sinfonietta / Overture, Elegy And Rondo

Description

Arnold Bax (1883-1953)Sinfonietta Overture, Elegy and RondoArnold Edward Trevor Bax was born in a south London suburbin November 1883. When he was twelve his parents moved to a rambling mansioncalled 'Ivy Bank' in the leafy north London suburb of Hampstead and this housewith its extensive gardens provided a protected background for the developmentof the affluent young Bax brothers. Sixteen years their father's junior, theirmother dominated the development of Arnold and his brother Clifford Bax (thelatter went on to achieve celebrity between the wars as a writer andplaywright).The brothers had no need to earn their own living and -while not lavish in their tastes - they pursued their artistic aspirations freeof all economic constraints until the First World War ended what Arnoldreferred to as 'the ivory tower of my youth'. He was not only soaking up allthat was then new in music - Strauss, Debussy, Rimsky-Korsakov and Scriabin -but also was completely swept up in the artistic turmoil generated byDyagilev's Ballets russes, who first appeared in London in 1911.Ultimately Bax found himself confronted by the real world.During his early years he had become passionately involved with things Irishand the reality of the Easter Rising in Dublin in April 1916 caused him toreact with 'painful intensity of emotion' for among those facing British troopswere personal friends. He did not see military service during the Great War buta succession of personal crises resulted in his life being totally changed. Inparticular his fast-growing passion for the young pianist Harriet Cohen led himto reject the wife that he had married in 1911, and children, for her.After 1918 Bax was uniquely placed to establish himself onthe musical scene with the large number of substantial scores he had writtenduring the war and he quickly became known as one of the leading Britishcomposers of the day, a reputation underlined by his First Symphony in 1922.Later in the 1920s Bax gradually lost momentum, though this was not realised byhis admirers at the time.The late 1920s and early 1930s found Bax looking to develophis musical style, and at this time he wrote a number of works such as theNorthern Ballads which, while they inform the later symphonies, were notpromoted by the composer at the time, and only recently has the stature ofthese works become apparent. Both the works here recorded might aptly bedescribed as 'Sinfonietta' and each, although almost unknown to present dayaudiences, is worthwhile in its individual way.Bax's last symphony, his Seventh, dates from 1938-39. It wasreally his last significant work, for during his last years he composed little,though he became very well-known for two film scores, Malta GC and OliverTwist. Delightful though they are, they are not the music by which a composerof stature may be judged and it is only with the wider appreciation of his manyorchestral works (84 Bax scores require the orchestra) that we can at last seehim for the significant and