Ashley Wass and James Judd turn in a finely wrought and atmospheric performance of Bax’s Winter Legends–a piano concerto in all but name. A Bax specialist, Wass highlights the alternating delicacy and bravura of the composer’s piano writing (especially in the alluring solo that opens the Molto moderato third movement), while Judd is equally adept at the orchestral accompaniment, drawing rich, colorful playing from the Bournemouth Symphony. This recording supplants the previous version by Margaret Fingerhut and Bryden Thompson, as Thompson is not as free with the music as Judd, and Chandos’ over-reverberant recording makes Bax’s already swimmingly chromatic music sound even more so.
The fillers, the delightful Morning Song “Maytime in Sussex” and the dramatic Saga Fragment, balance out the program quite nicely–about an hour of Bax at one sitting is probably all you need anyway. Naxos’ recording captures the full range of the music (it’s pretty wide), yet maintains clarity even in the tutti passages. Bax fans will find much to enjoy in this release.
