The Monthly Musical Record (September 1915, p.259f) critic reviewing the score of Apple-Blossom Time, suggests that ‘The art of Mr Bax is a correlative of the characteristic canvas work of Mr E.W. Hornel’. This is an interesting comparison. Edward Atkinson Hornel (1864–1933) was an Australian-born artist who moved to Kirkcudbright in Scotland. He specialised in Celtic and Japanese imagery - and pictures of orchards. The reviewer continues by noting that ‘summer happiness, trees in full blossom, ...

Since first hearing Arnold Bax’s A Northern Ballad in the early 1970’s, I have felt that it is underappreciated. The conventional critique of this tone poem places the ‘plot’ or the ‘action’ in the Highlands of Scotland. Nevertheless, as Lewis Foreman has pointed out (Lyrita Sleeve Notes, SRCS 62) ‘the programmatic origins of the work are not admitted in the score.’ The only clue is provided in Bax’s short note included in the premiere’s programme booklet ...

THE exciting news that internationally renowned British composer, Sir Arnold Bax, is to be officially recognised in Scotland will be welcomed by BMS members and all classical music enthusiasts.

Arnold Bax spent at least two months on the Skarzhinska Estate at Kruglik, near Lubny in Ukraine between May and July 1910. Alan Sutton recently visited Lubny and Kruglik and found some interesting historical background to the Skarzhinska family and to pre-revolutionary Lubny, impressions of which Bax took back with him and incorporated into later works. “Fair and smiling is the Ukrainian land, a fecund Slavonic Demeter”, wrote Bax at the opening of this section in ...

Harriet Cohen’s influence on Sir Arnold Bax’s music was arguably greatest on his piano music for which she was his muse and frequent dedicatee as well as constant performer. It is therefore surprising that she recorded so little of it commercially aside from the Viola Sonata with William Primrose and a handful of piano miniatures. There also exists a live recording of Winter Legends from a BBC broadcast but sadly none of her performances of the ...