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November Woods / Happy Forest / Summer Music
by Bax, Thomson, Ulster Orchestra
Product Group: Music
Studio: Chandos
ISBN: B000000AC0
EAN: 0095115830727
UPC: 095115830727
Binding/Media: Audio CD
Original Release Date: 2000-01-01
Release Date: 1992-07-29
SKU: CD058x0050
Condition: Very Good
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Editorial Reviews
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Amazon.com
Sir Arnold Bax (1883-1953) was a prolific composer, producing works in every musical genre except opera. But over the years he has become best known as a composer of tone poems. This is Volume One of Chandos' two-volume set of the best of them. And the best of the works here is November Woods, wherein Bax captures a peculiar, almost Edwardian nostalgia and longing for a lost landscape. This seems almost contradicted by The Happy Forest, which has its own underlying melancholy. Arnold Bax was (and is) the master of the British tone poem. --Paul Cook
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Customer Reviews
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Bax Glories recalled
Rating  (5)
Date: 2000-03-01
20 out of 20 customers found this reveiw helpful
This CD is the heartland of Bax's prolific output. Bax stopped composing Tone Poems and got into full blown symphonies before he retired 'like a grocer'. All four works reveal a master of orchestral colour and atmosphere. 'The Garden of Fand' is Bax's celtic depiction of the sea, its shimmering and ever changing textures and melodies seem to have always been with me. I was brought up on the 1958 Barbirolli Golden Guinea recording on vinyl, the recording quality was dreadful but the music still had the fairy magic. Thomson keeps the magic of the Barbirolli, thank heavens. To verify this, listen to the central section when the cellos intone a phrase before the bubbling woodwind which seems to be a painting of the Atlantic wind itself, leading into the flute solo that end up with a questioning semi cadence with the four horns. I know of no other composer who could summon up the magic of the sea like this and whenever I am alone with a friendly sea, I 'play' this work through in my mind, reassuring myself that I am participating in the same glory that Bax saw in 1916. The Happy Forest is a altogether jollier work with a host of different, 'happy' orchestral episodes that Thomson manages without fault. The central dreamy section with its beautiful theme is one of Bax's great tunes, it is a pity the episode is so short. November Woods is not one of my favourite Bax tone poems, it is predictive of some of the stormy sequences in his later symphonies but is brilliantly played here. The smaller work and less known, Summer Music is the product of an untroubled soul who is happy with their life at the time. It is very reminiscent of Delius with its woodwind arabesques and string writing like a summer heat haze. The ending is truly glorious and makes me think of those days in my life before I encountered school and the worries and duties of life. This disk is my all time favourite (of my 300+) and will never be replaced in that capacity. I cannot say more.
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