Search - Arnold Bax, Adrian Boult, London Philharmonic Orchestra :: Boult conducts Bax

Best introduction to Bax...and maybe Boult

Larry VanDeSande | Mason, Michigan United States | 02/22/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I wasn't much for English music when Lyrita recordings were big in the LP era, setting high standards for performance and sound reproduction, so I never got into them at that time. Since their reincarnation in the CD era, just about every critic older than age 40 has waxed both philosophic and nostalgic over the return of these old friends. This Lyrita recording features one of England's greatest 20th century conductors performing one of its better 20th century composers.



My introduction to the music of Arnold Bax (1883-1953) is still ongoing, but I've heard enough of his orchestral music now to understand his place in English musical history. He is a time and place counterpart to Frederick Delius, who one perhaps the greatest colorist among modern English composers. Like Delius -- the author of highly perfumed scores about subjects as far apart as the English landscape and Florida -- Bax blended romance wiht French impressionism, sometimes with an Irish or Scottish influence. Both wrote descriptive romantic music like the orchstral tone poems included on this disk.



Where Bax is both in league with and ventures away from Delius can be heard perhaps best in the symphonic tone poem "The Garden of Fand", a 16-plus minutes episode that alternates loving and bucolic string portamento against loud and brassy bluster in the height of the score's romantic arc. Adrian Boult is expert in this music and brings forth all the qualities that merge pastoral beauty with Celtic language, English breadth, dignity and high romance.



As for the sound, I see what all the critics must have liked about Lyrita in the LP days. If you are too young to have experienced that, you missed a time when many collectors thought the best sounding music was being produced. There's no question today's digital technology lets us hear things we never heard on long-playing records. Yet questions remain to this day whether digital technology is the way music actually sounds or whether it is to music what high definition television is to its images -- something that it makes them better than they are in real life. Or tries to do so, in any event.



This Lyrita recording, which I accept as exemplar of the line, is fabulous sounding with truthful and warm reproduction of every section of the orchestral, short of some thumping timpani that would have been actuely more well defined in DDD. But this is small price to pay for such a keepsake of Bax -- a wonderful introduction to the moods he creates through his orchestral pictures. I can hardly think of a better way to begin to know the composer than through the five pieces here in completely realized advocacy by Adrian Boult.

"

Best Tintagel ever ... other works great, too

Classic Music Lover | Maryland, USA | 06/17/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Sir Adrian Boult was one of the best interpreters of Sir Arnold Bax's music of the earlier generation, generally better IMHO than Barbirolli or Beecham, even though both of those conductors made wonderful recordings of The Garden of Fand before this one was recorded. The Tintagel interpretation by Boult is absolutely the best one on disk -- and there are so many to choose from these days including Thomson, Handley, Barbirolli, Marriner and others. In this particular performance, no one quite matches Boult's ability to conjure up the seascape --- including that magnificent crashing wave at the conclusion of the work.



Boult's performances of the Northern Ballad #1 and Mediterranean are also the best ones to be had on disk today. As for The Garden of Fand, the early stereo version by Barbirolli is a touch more effective, while you'll probably do better with Handley's new recording of November Woods on Chandos. But all-in-all this disk is a treasure, and Lyrita's rich, vital engineering capturing the London Phil in top form is just the icing on the cake. For an introduction to the special soundworld of Bax and his highly expressive music, I guarantee you won't be disappointed in this disk."

Boult's brilliant Bax interpretations

L. Johan Modée | Earth | 03/28/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This Lyrita recording has a legendary status: here we find the superb collection of Sir Adrian Boult's outstanding interpretations of Arnold Bax's best tone poems.



Bax's arresting and moving romantic masterpieces, "The Garden Of Fand", "Tintagel", and "November Woods", should be in every serious collection of classical music, and this is the recording to own. Recorded in 1967, we hear the excellent interpretations of Bax's supreme champion. These interpretations are outstanding, and the London Philharmonic Orchestra plays with confidence and passion under Boult's baton.



In addition, you get "Northern Ballad No.1" and "Mediterranean" as well, which are more "easy pieces" from Bax. But these interpretations are of course outstanding too.



Sound is excellent: vintage analogue in fine remasterings.



Warmly recommended!

"