Search - Bax, Thomson, Lpo :: Symphony 6 / Festival Overture

The two works an this disc bracket Arnold Bax's long career. Festival Overture is a 1912 composition, full of student brio and slapdash energy; yet nowhere in the 15-minute piece is a nod given to the composers of Elgar's era. Bax's music was always aimed at the 20th century. The merits of Bax's Sixth Symphony (1935) come in his skillful weaving of divergent themes that unite in a wonderful--and wonderfully complex--final movement. Bax's symphonies have often been called "extended" tone poems. But so what? Their complexity and shifting textures still cohere and still delight. --Paul Cook