Arnold Bax - Violin Concerto; etc. (Lydia Mordkovitch; Bryden Thomson)

Information

Composer: Arnold Bax

• (01) Concerto for Violin and Orchestra
• (04) A Legend, symphonic poem
• (05) Romantic Overture
• (06) Golden Eagle, incidental music

Lydia Mordkovitch, violin
London Philharmonic Orchestra
Bryden Thomson, conductor

Date: 1991
Label: Chandos
https://www.chandos.net/products/catalogue/CHAN%209003

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Review

Bax's Violin Concerto has a curious history. It was written in 1937–8 for Heifetz, who didn't want it—not surprisingly, for it doesn't sound like a Heifetz work. So Bax put it away for five years while Walton's and Britten's concertos appeared and were successful and then sent it to Eda Kersey, who gave the first performance with Sir Henry Wood. I heard it and can still recall the superb playing of the soloist, who died aged 40 the following year. Does anyone remember her?

There is poignancy about this recording, for it marks the end of the late Bryden Thomson's valiant championship of Bax's orchestral music for Chandos. He conducts a mellow, affectionate performance of the Concerto, an attractive work, more lightly scored than much of Bax and with an unusually shaped first movement entitled ''Overture, Ballad and Scherzo'' which is almost a miniature concerto in itself. The adagio which follows combines Elgarian wistfulness with Baxian lushness and the finale contrasts a jolly rondo section with a seductive waltz. Lydia Mordkovitch plays the solo part with real flair and richness of tone and seems to me to bring poetic and romantic feelings to the work similar to those of its first interpreter.

A Legend is the last of Bax's 22 symphonic-poems, a last and I fear vain attempt to recapture the power and beauty of his Tintagel. All the familiar Bax fingerprints are there—colourful scoring, evocation of wind and waves and 'battles long ago'—but in spite of the stirring advocacy of Thomson and the LPO, it sounds rather like a last fling and deteriorates into an empty march-like finale. The disc is completed by six items of incidental music Bax wrote in 1945 for his brother Clifford's play Golden Eagle, about Mary, Queen of Scots. As always in the Chandos Bax series, the recording is exemplary.

-- Gramophone

More reviews:
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2000/Oct00/baxviolin.htm
https://www.amazon.com/Bax-Violin-Concerto-Romantic-Overture/dp/B000000AO9

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Arnold Bax (8 November 1883 – 3 October 1953) was an English composer, poet, and author. His prolific output includes songs, choral music, chamber pieces, and solo piano works, but he is best known for his orchestral music. In addition to a series of symphonic poems he wrote seven symphonies and was for a time widely regarded as the leading British symphonist. In his last years Bax found his music regarded as old-fashioned, and after his death it was generally neglected. From the 1960s onwards, mainly through a growing number of commercial recordings, his music was gradually rediscovered.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Bax

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Lydia Mordkovitch (30 April 1944 in Saratov, Russia – 9 December 2014 in London, England) was a Russian-born British violinist. She studied at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory under David Oistrakh, then serving as his assistant from 1968 to 1970. Mordkovitch settled permanently in the UK and signed a recording contract with Chandos in 1980, after RCA, the label with which she previously had a contract, went bankrupt. She was featured in over 60 recordings for Chandos, many of which were with the conductor Neeme Järvi. Mordkovitch also became a professor at the Royal Academy of Music in London in 1995.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lydia_Mordkovitch

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Bryden Thomson (16 July 1928 – 14 November 1991) was a Scottish conductor. He study conducting, first with Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt and then with Igor Markevitch. Thomson was remembered especially for his championship of British and Scandinavian composers. His recordings include influential surveys of the orchestral music of Hamilton Harty and Arnold Bax. Thomson held posts as principal conductor of several British orchestras, including the BBC Northern Symphony Orchestra (1968–1973), the BBC Welsh Symphony Orchestra (1978–1982) and the Ulster Orchestra (1977–1985).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryden_Thomson

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