Sheffield in South Yorkshire is a city I have never previously visited and was known to me only as the home of the annual World Snooker championship. But on Saturday 10 June,  it proved the unlikely venue for an even more unlikely concert devoted entirely to English music with Bax’s Third Symphony the pièce de résistance. I can’t remember when I last attended a live performance of it, though I do remember it was at Bax’s ...

Arnold Bax’s Concerto, later the Phantasy, for viola and orchestra, was written for, and dedicated to, the violist Lionel Tertis. It was premiered by him during a Philharmonic Society concert on 17 November 1921. The Phantasy was played several times in the ensuing years but was then largely forgotten until its revival in 1989 by Vernon Handley and Rivka Golani. This essay will examine the context, provide a non-technical description of the music, and examine the ...

Almost 20 years have passed since the 50th anniversary commemoration of the death of Sir Arnold Bax and the concurrent release of Vernon Handley’s complete set of Bax symphonies on Chandos. That set received enormous amounts of media attention and became the ‘go-to’ set for the Bax symphonies.

If you are reading this, it’s probably fair to say you are experienced in unrequited love. Carrying a torch for a composer bypassed by history is like that, rendered all the more intense by one’s sense of injustice at the neglect.

Superlative liner notes from Graham Parlett, added to full texts and a loving presentation from EM Records, make ‘From the Hills of Dream’ an attractive prospect. But does the music of Bax’s forgotten songs justify such quality treatment? Christopher Webber asks the question ...