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 ...

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 ...

Frank Merrick & Henry Holst (Nimbus Grand Piano, 4 CD set) Hot on the heels of Nimbus’s Frank Merrick: A Recorded Legacy, a bumper box of 9 CDs centred on the pianist’s pioneering recordings of Bax’s sonatas and a handful of shorter works – including Paean which was dedicated to him – comes this equally valuable supplement for piano and violin. Merrick’s partner throughout 4 CDs of underexposed 20th c. ...

Play of Colours (Farbenspiel) Trio Partout. The reason Bax’s Elegiac Trio has been recorded so frequently – more often than any other of his works excepting Tintagel and the Clarinet Sonata – has something to do with its delectable brevity, but more to do with the fact that it makes an ideal companion to Debussy’s famous sonata for the same, unusual forces. Because the English work was written one year ...