Bax: Symphony No. 7 (CD review)

Also, Tintagel. David Lloyd-Jones, Royal Scottish National Orchestra. Naxos 8.557145.

English composer Sir Arnold Bax (1883-1953) wrote tone poems in the first half of the twentieth century. Whether he called them “symphonies” or not, they were either genuine tone poems or collections of tone poems strung together into longer symphonic works. The two compositions represented on this disc illustrate the point: his final symphony, the Seventh Symphony (1939), and his most-famous short piece, Tintagel (1919).

Tintagel, of course, is Bax’s depiction of the rocky precipice on the west coast of Cornwall that mythologists and researchers think may have been the birthplace of the legendary King Arthur. Whether it really was Arthur’s birthplace or whether there really was a King Arthur is beside the point; Tintagel, the place, really exists. Like the actual location, the short, symphonic tone picture is all about rugged seascapes, craggy cliffs, and splashes of ocean spray. It’s a wonderfully evocative bit of music, which Maestro Lloyd-Jones exploits nicely. However, Tingagel tends to upstage the disc’s main attraction, the Symphony No. 7, which sounds a mite lightweight by comparison in its gentle Romanticism, as well as sounding somewhat imitative of Bax’s earlier work.

Anyhow, as I say, David Lloyd-Jones, who finished up his complete Bax cycle for Naxos, again served the music well with this recording, although I thought his interpretation this time out was a tad on the soft, leisurely side. Tintagel, especially, has more bite, more luster, and a more rough-and-tumble vigor in the hands of conductors Bryden Thomson (Chandos) and Sir Adrian Boult (Lyrita). What’s more, those recordings sound better, have greater range, and more transparency than the slightly bland-sounding Naxos disc.

Needless to say, however, the Naxos disc has the advantage of price, which may be its strongest attraction. After all, if you’ve never heard Tintagel before, you might not want to spend the money on a full-price disc just to hear it. In any case, you can’t go far wrong with this Naxos disc, and if you do like it, you can check out the even better Thomson and Boult recordings (the Boult-Lyrita disc being among my favorite recordings of anything).

JJP

To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click here: