Little things first. Red Autumn is not a collection of Cold War spy stories from which The Hunt for Red October was taken. It’s a five-minute piece for two pianos orchestrated by Graham Parlett, part of the ongoing opportunistic and parasitical modern phenomenon of making sure that dead composers go on composing whether anyone cares about them or not. I mean it’s not as if music lovers, like the Hillary Clinton supporters at this weekend’s DNC Rules Committee meeting, are besieging record labels, publishers, and concert organizations for more works by Bax. Most of the stuff on this disc never gets performed live, even in England, and some of it wasn’t even played in the composer’s lifetime. Don’t these people get the fact that value resides in scarcity? That what makes something a “classic” to begin with is a measure of quality made precious by its rarity? Faux Elgar is bad enough, but pseudo-Bax? Give me a break!
Now we all know that Vernon Handley is a Bax specialist. I suppose that’s better than being a Rubbra authority, but not by much. One of my mother’s friends at a luncheon gathering once embarrassingly confessed that her son-in-law was a poet. “Look at the bright side,” quipped another one of the ladies, “at least he’s not a shepherd.” Bax’s tone poems, for all their mythical Celtic pretensions, are music for podium shepherds. They are basically foolproof, guaranteed to “make an effect” if everyone plays the notes correctly and in tempo. This severely limits their expressive depth, and thus the opportunities to make interpretive points. Accordingly, Good Shepherd Handley steers his BBC flock through Bax’s instrumental thickets with a confident hand, as we have every reason to expect. The Northern Ballads, with their militant eruptions, offer slightly more contrast than the other pieces on the disc–Handley even recorded one of them before, also for Chandos, with the Royal Philharmonic. That version had the finer orchestra, this one marginally tauter rhythms and cleaner sonics.
If I seem less than impressed by Handley’s achievement, it’s only because music so restricted in scope, so dependent on heavily chromatic harmony and facile instrumental effects, quickly risks turning monotonous. Compare, for example, Bax’s Nympholept to Sibelius’ tone poem The Wood Nymph. Both deal ostensibly with a similar concept: the dangers and dire consequences that arise from being seduced by the “pagan” lure of mind-blowing sex with a hedonistic female nature-spirit. Sibelius emphasizes the human element, with clearly delineated musical “characters” and a highly varied sequence of moods. Bax just writes more of the same: thick, gloppy nature music, some of it exquisitely colored, to be sure; but where is the passion in this post-Tristan harmonic quagmire? It may be fun to hear once, but when was the last time one of your friends eagerly exclaimed, “I’m going home after work to play Bax’s Nympholept”? Or, “Wow, just dig this new recording of Nympholept!” Similarly, it’s surely nice, in The Happy Forest, that “the forest” is “happy”–but do we care?
I’m not raising these issues to demean Handley’s advocacy of Bax (though his exaggerated claims for him do give rise to a chuckle or two). Indeed, I believe that several of the symphonies (the Second, Third, Fifth, and Sixth) represent significant contributions to the modern English school. All of this music is enjoyable enough on its face. That said, a little goes a long way. Chandos already has this music in its catalog (save for the irrelevant Red Autumn), and in asking Handley to do it over again they are suggesting that, in his role of greatest living Baxian, he has some unique insights to bring to its realization. He doesn’t, not necessarily because he lacks the talent, but because there isn’t enough musical substance here to prove otherwise. So if you already own these pieces, there’s no need to duplicate. If not, then feel free to pick up this well played, well engineered disc.
