Orchestral works. / Vol. 1

Abstract

In the early 1930s the British composer Sir Arnold Bax was at the peak of his reputation, and was widely regarded in the UK as one of the leading composers of the day. His Third and Second Symphonies (in that order) were first heard in London in the spring of 1930, the Fourth in December 1932 and the Fifth in January 1934. Most of the other significant British symphonies of the 1930s were yet to appear. Walton's Symphony in B flat minor arrived in December 1934 without its last movement, and was not heard complete for almost another year, while Vaughan Williams Fourth Symphony erupted on a startled world in April 1935. So when Bax's new Cello Concerto appeared on 5 March 1934, it was the work of a major figure. Bax had not previously attempted a conventional concerto, though he had produced a number of concertante works, all of them memorable. The earliest was also the most substantial, his Symphonic Variations for piano and orchestra, in which the massive piano part probably closely reflects Bax's own pianism. It was quickly followed by his Viola Concerto, the title changed after the first movement to Phantasy for Viola and Orchestra, a modest and delightful score in

which Bax made his only acknowledged quotation of an Irish folksong. Later came the extended Winter Legends for piano and orchestra, almost an orchestral symphony with concertante piano solo, written, like most of Bax's piano works, for the pianist Harriet Cohen. It had been premiered in London in February 1932 and was followed by the much shorter Saga Fragment which Bax had scored from his one-movement Piano Quartet and which Miss Cohen introduced in London in October 1933. In the Autumn of 1931 Harriet Cohen undertook an extended tour accompanying the Spanish cellist Gaspar Cassado. and, ever anxious to promote Bax and his music, she introduced the idea of Cassado asking Bax for a concerto. Cassado was in fact a composer as well as cellist, perhaps best known for his concerto version of Schubert's Arpeggione Sonata (as Concerto in A minor'). His own Cello Concerto in D minor. Rapsodia Catalana, had been completed only a few years previously. One cellist remarked of Bax's long and complex Cello Sonata of 1923. it is like a journey', and many commentators have remarked how Bax's middle period symphonic works appear to be dictated by considerations other than purely musical form. The Cello Concerto is no exception, except that its effect is achieved with a smaller orchestra than that for which Bax customarily wrote: only two trumpets (the second not appearing at all in the first movement), no trombones or tuba, and no percussion other than timpani. Often Bax needs no more than chamber music textures, and these make the perfect accompaniment for the cello soloist. There are some remarkably delicate effects. For example, the closing bars of the first movement have the solo cello against strings and then wind nonet with just two chords touched in on the horns at the end At the beginning of the lovely Nocturne there are only six winds and harp playing, and at several places in this movement only four or five winds. The strings are frequently divisi and only Bax would have thought of accompanying the first appearance of his second subject tune in the Nocturne with three solo double basses. Just once in the Nocturne the solo cellist duets with a sok> viola, but in the finale Bax rec- 'es = -=:-e' longer duet, where the middle sect o~ tune ts delivered in thirds - in many oe^c — =-:es :~e viola is inaudible, and the effect s c-te different if both instruments can be •^eard Even more in the last movemer*. r-e-e frequently only five, six or fewer instruments playing with the cello.