Bax: Piano Sonatas Nos. 1 And 2 / Dream In Exile / Nereid

Description

Arnold Bax (1883-1953): Piano Works 1Piano Sonatas Nos. 1 and 2 Dream in Exile NereidArnold Bax was one of a group of talented youngpianist-composers who emerged from London's RoyalAcademy of Music in the years immediately after1900. They included York Bowen, Benjamin Dale andPaul Corder, all pupils of Tobias Matthay for piano andFrederick Corder for composition. At much the sametime the pianists Myra Hess, Irene Scharrer, and a littlelater Harriet Cohen were all Matthay pupils, and ofcourse they played Bax's music. While Bax took manyyears to make a career, his contemporary York Bowenwas an immediate hit both as pianist and composer andappeared at Queen's Hall in his own music while still astudent. Yet Bowen's orchestral music is now largelyforgotten while Bax is widely known.Bax wrote in almost all conventional formsexcluding opera (though he unsuccessfully attemptedopera more than once). With seven symphonies,concertos, many orchestral works including thefamiliar tone poem Tintagel, choral music, manychamber works, songs and piano music his wouldeventually be a large output and between the wars atleast he was certainly seen as a major figure, a staturerewarded by a knighthood in the Coronation HonoursList in 1937. Against his better judgement he becamethe Master of the King's Musick in 1942 after the deathof Walford Davies.Bax's early life was dominated by the keyboardand in his twenties he appeared in concerts playing hisown music. Though not a regular concert pianist suchwas his pianism that he tended to be called on whenothers failed. Thus in February 1909 he accompaniedDebussy songs in the composer's presence, and inJanuary 1914 did the same for Schoenberg's songswhen the booked pianist withdrew at the last minute.But after the First World War he played in publicincreasingly rarely, although he did make tworecordings, of Delius's First Violin Sonata and his ownViola Sonata in May and June 1929. The fire in Bax'sromantic pianism is evident in both, with his generousphrasing and left hand articulation, and while Delius isreported as finding Bax's playing too forceful for hismusic, we might feel it gives it some fibre.Bax's solo piano music consists of four big-bonedsonatas written between 1910 and 1934, and a coupleof dozen highly characteristic shorter pieces many ofthem technically in the shadow of Debussy or Scriabin.There was also the original version, a sonata, of whatin 1922 became his First Symphony, and a dozen or soalternative versions of orchestral works, and short latepiano pieces unpublished in his lifetime.The shorter piano pieces were mainly writtenbetween 1915 and 1920 and include impressionisticminiatures such as The Princess's Rose Garden, Apple-Blossom Time and A Romance. Bax's well-knownliaison with the pianist Harriet Cohen started in 1915and many of his short piano pieces were dedicated toher. Indeed this resulted in rivalry between Harriet('Tanya' to her circle) and Myra Hess in the playing ofBax's piano music. Yet H