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Category Archives: Latest Reviews

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Frank Merrick – The Legacy Recordings

Posted on October 18, 2019 by Bax AdminFebruary 18, 2021

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 piano sonatas were captured either on vinyl or tape. While many have claimed she was a pianist of limited ability (superb in Bach but compromised in pieces requiring a more formidable technique), she still possessed an understanding of Bax’s music that she acquired from having known the composer on very intimate terms for much of their lives. She also imposed an unofficial ban on others performing his piano music, which of course prevented it from being played and recorded by pianists who might have been better able to promote it during Bax’s lifetime. As a result, we have very few recordings of Bax’s piano music recorded during the composer’s life but we are lucky to again be able to hear one set of the sonatas and selected piano pieces played by a friends and contemporary of the composer who understood his intentions and whose playing of these major works deserves to be described as authoritative.

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Review by Christopher Webber – Frank Merrick and Henry Holst play Bax Violin Sonatas, etc.

Posted on August 29, 2019 by Bax AdminFebruary 4, 2021

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. repertoire is the Danish violinist Henry Holst, a pupil of Carl Nielsen who led the pre-war Berlin Philharmonic under Furtwängler and went on to become principal professor of violin at the Royal Manchester College of Music for thirty years, while continuing his high-profile career as an orchestral leader and soloist.

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The Trio Partout plays Bax, Debussy, Harald Genzmer and Johannes Maria Staud.

Posted on August 29, 2019 by Bax AdminSeptember 25, 2019

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 after the French, the assumption has often been made that its composer was consciously writing an hommage: but Graham Parlett’s recent examination of composition, performance and publication dates suggests strongly that Bax could not have heard Debussy’s masterly sonata (or studied the score) before writing his own. The near-simultaneous appearance of these lovely works may well have been happy chance.

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Review by Graham Parlett – Natalia Williams-Wandoch plays piano music by Sir Arnold Bax

Posted on March 6, 2019 by Bax AdminMay 21, 2020

Piano Music by Arnold Bax on Usk Recordings. Hot on the heels of Mark Bebbington’s ‘Private Passions’ comes another splendid CD that also contains works that have never been recorded before. Natalia Williams-Wandoch has been playing the pieces included here at recitals over the past few years, and it was good news when we learned that she had decided to record them for the Usk label in January 2018. With a single exception—the slow movement of the Sonata in B flat—these are all world premières, and for that reason alone will be required listening for Bax enthusiasts.

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Review by Christopher Webber: Private Passions

Posted on February 8, 2019 by Bax AdminMay 21, 2020

Piano music by Arnold Bax and Harriet Cohen. Strangely, the only pieces here to be published in their own time were Cohen’s four, brief Russian Impressions, and I wish I could report that they were better than pleasant makeweights. I’m glad to have heard this first recording, but nothing in these derivative, oddly directionless miniatures made me eager to revisit Cohen the composer. As Germaine Greer puts it, mediocrity is mediocrity, even where its creator is female. Let’s be grateful that Harriet Cohen’s magnetic artistry and personality gave birth to Bax’s remarkable musical world, and that Mark Bebbington has brought some of their obscurer riches into the light of day. This is truly a disc to treasure.

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Posted in Archived Reviews, Latest Reviews

Review by Richard R. Adams – Ireland, Delius, Bax

Posted on January 4, 2018 by Bax AdminJanuary 4, 2018

With this disc, Lionel Handy completes his survey of Bax’s cello music including the much-maligned Cello Concerto that appeared on an earlier Lyrita disc. Here he performs Bax’s Cello Sonata from 1923 and couples it with the cello sonata of … Continue reading →

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Review by Christopher Webber – Bax: Symphony No.2 (1924-6)

Posted on December 11, 2017 by Bax AdminDecember 14, 2017

Self-quotation may be a sign of age, idleness or both; but I can’t avoid referring back to my 2007 review of this performance of Bax’s Symphony No.2, performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Sir Eugene Goossens in 1956 (Dutton … Continue reading →

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Christopher Webber reviews the latest Naxos disc from the Carice Singers

Posted on June 12, 2017 by Bax AdminJune 14, 2017

Given the power of Bax’s symphonies and tone poems, it is easy sometimes to forget the equal mastery of his major piano and chamber works, let alone the best of his countless productions for the human voice. Hearing this excellent … Continue reading →

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Philip Mead’s Private Invitation Concert

Posted on March 9, 2017 by Bax AdminMarch 9, 2017

At 2 p.m. on the afternoon of Saturday, 14 January 2017, the distinguished pianist Philip Mead began a marathon all-Bax programme in the Recital Room of Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge—a very rare event that included two world premières. The … Continue reading →

Posted in Announcements, Latest Reviews

‘For the Fallen’

Posted on March 9, 2017 by Bax AdminMarch 13, 2017

‘For the Fallen’,  Elgar: The Spirit of England Op.80*,  A Voice in the Wilderness Op.77$,  Grania and Diarmid Op.42#,  Bax: In Memoriam,  Hallé Choir and Orchestra,  Rachel Nicolls (soprano)*; Joshua Ellicott (narrator), Jennifer France (soprano)$; Madeleine Shaw (mezzo-soprano)#,  Sir Mark … Continue reading →

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