Tone Poems Vol 1 (Incls 'The Garden of Fand' & 'November Woods')

BBC Music Magazine Awards 2007: Orchestral Finalist

'This recording makes a splendid follow-up to Vernon Handley's set of the complete Bax symphonies: here some of the composer's most powerful orchestral writing receives committed, full-blooded performance, the complex textures ideally balanced and recorded.'
(BBC Music Magazine Orchestral recording of the month May 2006)

This new disc is conducted by Gramophone award-winner Vernon Handley, famous for his Bax interpretations and Includes the rarely recorded Sinfonietta

Chandos' legendary partnership with the BBC Philharmonic receives universal critical acclaim.

Chandos has long championed the music of Sir Arnold Bax: our Bax symphonies cycle with the BBC Philharmonic and Vernon Handley received tremendous public and critical commendation and won several awards, most notably the Gramophone award for Best Orchestral recording. This winning team now tackles three of Bax's orchestral tone poems, and adds the rarely recorded Sinfonietta of 1932.

Bax's love affair with the orchestra first fully came to fruition with the tone poem In the Faery Hills, which was completed in 1909 and also crowned his affection for the country of Ireland. Bax himself referred to it as his first orchestral work, and it was thus regarded during his lifetime. In the Faery Hills was to become his first widely played tone poem and the only one of his early orchestral scores to be published. In the Faery Hills and The Garden of Fand are influenced by Bax's early passion for Ireland, however, the reality of the First World War, the Easter rising in Dublin, along with his love affair with the pianist Harriet Cohen, made for some deeply autobiographical works. In The Garden of Fand, completed in 1913 whilst he was living in Dublin, Bax finally fully achieved his mature impressionistic style. He referred to this as 'the last of my Irish music', and the work evokes both the land and the sea, a constant source of inspiration for Bax. Both November Woods and Tintagel were intimately concerned with Bax's love affair with Harriet Cohen. The Sinfonietta was never performed in Bax's lifetime; it was premiered in a broadcast by the BBC Welsh Symphony Orchestra under Vernon Handley in 1983 so it is just that this recording should be led by that great conductor