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COLIN ANDERSON
After many years of waiting, Vernon Handley has finally recorded the seven symphonies of Arnold Bax (1883-1953). The waiting has been shared. Although lovers of Bax's music have had recorded symphony cycles from Bryden Thomson (Chandos) and David Lloyd-Jones (Naxos), as well as an incomplete one on Lyrita, the feeling has been that as Vernon Handley has such a strong
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and lasting relationship with Bax's music, begun when he was a young man, that recordings from him would place Bax's symphonies on an even higher plane and reflect Handley's absolute belief in Bax as a master of form.
In early October 2003, I sat down with Tod (as Vernon Handley is affectionately known to friends and colleagues) to talk about Bax's symphonies. He had recently completed the new Chandos cycle (in early September with Symphonies 1 and 6; Chandos then achieved a rush release to coincide with the 50th-anniversary of Bax's death, which was on October 3). ''We still have a lot of work to do to establish British music where it should be in the world's ears.'' Tod's opening gambit! His many recordings of British music have, of course, played their part in achieving this.
When I spoke with Tod, he was preparing Bax's Symphony No. 3 with the students of London's Royal Academy of Music (where Bax studied). So we started talking about this work, the best known of Bax's symphonies (also recorded by Barbirolli and Edward Downes). The first-movement climax has an unexpected anvil stroke. The movement itself is ''quite complicated. Bax develops certain sections more than you would expect in a sonata base. So much of it is very beautiful, melded, and proportioned, and then he stirs up this tremendous riot in the orchestra. He knew everybody would have heard all the percussion instruments before; it's the point where many composers just do a cymbal clash. He doesn't often mark the peak of developments; cymbals often occur off the beat, or on the second beat, or a weak beat.''
I suggested to Tod that London-born Bax doesn't actually sound quintessentially British. One can hear Russian, Scandinavian, and American influences. ''I'll agree with you. In the Second Symphony there's a positively Gershwin use of the xylophone. It's always...