Review by Stephen Morris

I first encountered Bax when I was 14 years old.  Bored rigid by the pop music of the early 1980s, I started pulling records (vinyl, naturally) at random from Wrexham Library – 10p per record per week – until I found out what I really liked. Stumbling upon the Fifth Symphony and then seeking out the others, I never looked back and must have listened to the whole cycle hundreds of times since then.

But until this week, I’d never heard a Bax symphony performed live.  I have a dim recollection of a very poor performance of Tintagel in the Free Trade Hall when I was a student in Manchester, but in 40 years, I’d simply never found an opportunity to hear a Bax symphony.  It was through Twitter that I was tipped-off about the performance of the First Symphony in Northampton on Saturday (2^nd March), and I was determined not to miss it.

It’s fair to say that despite my excitement at the prospect of hearing this symphony, my expectations weren’t sky-high.  For one thing, I had never heard of the Northampton Symphony Orchestra, and it had never occurred to me to visit Northampton itself: a respectable enough but very plain town in England’s East Midlands, about two hours’ drive from my home. The venue itself was an Edwardian Anglican Church a good mile away from the town centre, which had seen better days, as had the area around it, which was dominated by takeaways, convenience stores and vape shops.

But it was definitely worth the trek.

Though an amateur orchestra, they had secured the services of a professional conductor, John Gibbons, who had put together a programme of 20^th Century music with Bernstein and Prokofiev prior to the interval and the Bax symphony after it.   My wife predicted half the audience would leave before the end of the interval, but in fact, all of the 200-or-so people who had attended at the beginning of the programme were still there at the end.

To Gibbons’ great credit, he had done his homework and spoke for about 5-10 minutes to provide some background to the piece before launching in; referencing the tumultuous background of the First World War, and in particular the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin, in which Bax had lost several close friends. 

From the first few bars, it was clear the orchestra had been well-rehearsed and were treating the piece with the seriousness that it merited. The imposing first few chords were played precisely and from that point onwards the playing was crisp and the textures and tempos entirely in keeping with my recollections of the Myer Fredman and Vernon Handley recordings.

It’s no great revelation to say that hearing a piece played live, after having only heard recordings, made me aware of aspects of the score that I had previously never noticed.   Being able to pick out each individual instrument according to which direction the sound came from, and still being able to enjoy their combined effect, was a testimony to Bax’s uncommon skill at orchestration and the orchestra’s accuracy in playing it.

After handling the tumult of the main part of the First Movement, the next big test for the orchestra was how they’d handle the transition into the delightful flute solo about ten minutes in and then the soft, melodic section that follows. This too, was delivered well, lingering just long enough over the quiet chords before the tempo picks up again towards the end of the movement.

I’m probably not alone in regarding the second movement, the Lento Solenne, as the highlight of this symphony – indeed, one of the highlights of the whole cycle. Lewis Foreman, in his 1983 biography of the composer, described it as “quite unlike anything else in all Bax.”  Certainly, it’s hard to think of a better example where he sustains such a long, suspenseful build-up over several minutes to a roaring climax followed by a lingering, tranquil conclusion. Despite Bax’s protestations that he was not writing ‘programme music,’  it’s hard not to hear a raging storm, whether literal or metaphorical, whipping up and then subsiding into a bright, calm morning where all is finally well. Again, the orchestra kept their discipline throughout this. In the whole performance there were very few audibly wrong notes, but perhaps the most noticeable of them came as the trumpet (or was it a cornet?) wavered a little over the final few bars before the tempo once again picked up. Even so, it did not detract from the experience.

After the Lento Solenne, the third movement of the symphony has always struck me as something of an anticlimax; it doesn’t quite deliver on the expectations built up by the previous movement and it’s often tempting (whisper it softly) to skip over it altogether. All I can say is that hearing it performed live gave me more of an appreciation for it than I’d had before, and I’ll pay more attention to it the next time I listen to a recording of the First Symphony.

All in all, then, the orchestra more than did justice to themselves and to the symphony. I’d gladly travel more than two hours to hear them, or Gibbons at the helm of any other orchestra, play any one of the other Bax symphonies.

 

Details:

Saturday 2^nd March 2024.

Northampton Symphony Orchestra.

Conductor: John Gibbons

Leader: Emily Groom

Venue: Christ Church, Christchurch Road, Northampton.

 

Programme:

Leonard Bernstein: Symphonic Dances from West Side Story

Sergei Prokofiev: Violin Concerto No. 2 (soloist: Joo Yeon Sir)

Interval

Arnold Bax: Symphony No. 1

 

About the author:

Stephen Morris is a Welsh-speaking Physics PhD, an evangelical Christian and committed Welsh nationalist, a Northampton Symphony Orchestra publisher of translations of classic Welsh novels, and a long-time enthusiast for Arnold Bax and many of his English contemporaries: particularly E.J. Moeran, Gerald Finzi, William Walton and Peter Warlock.