No matter how often I try, I cannot hear Bax. Not even a great conductor with a great orchestra, beautifully recorded on a great label, can make this music work for me.
And yet, I love the uncharacteristically firm Symphony no. 1, which is unlike anything else he wrote, and which comes to life under any baton. Bryden Thomson with Chandos, David Lloyd-Jones with Naxos, Myer Fredman with Lyrita: all of these recordings bring out the power and structure of no. 1, qualities I have never found elsewhere in Bax, not in the other symphonies, not in the tone poems.
I would never deny the sudden sparks that flicker up in "Tintagel" or in "November Woods," until the music sinks back into a glutinous Celtic bog. People love these tone poems; I want to love them, too, but I can only think of how much more I find in Sibelius, and of how many times I have heard these Baxian efforts without epiphany and without pleasure.
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