Reissue CD Reviews
BAX: Winter Legends; A Mountain Mood; A Hill Tune; Viola Sonata — Harriet Cohen, piano/ William Primrose, viola/ BBC Symphony Orchestra/Clarence Raybould — Dutton
1937-1950 recordings by Bax's beautiful and talented mistress
Published on September 05, 2005
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BAX: Winter Legends; A Mountain Mood; A Hill Tune; Viola Sonata
— Harriet Cohen, piano/ William Primrose, viola/ BBC Symphony
Orchestra/Clarence Raybould
Dutton CDBP 9751 mono, 76:33 (Distrib. Harmonia Mundi) ****:
As much a social as a musical document, this disc attests to the artistic as well as romantic liaison between pianist Harriet Cohen (1985-1967) and composer Arnold Bax, who abandoned his wife and children to engage, during WWI, in an extended love affair with Tobias Matthay pupil Cohen, who was some thirteen years his junior. Bax wrote several salon pieces as well as three large-scale concertos for Harriet Cohen. Cohen premiered the Symphonic Variations in in 1920, and then became the only pianist to champion the Winter Legends (1932) in the composer's lifetome. The original performance had Adrian Boult leading the BBC Symphony Orchestra. After Cohen injured her right wrist in 1948, Bax wrote a left-hand concerto for her with which she enjoyed some success at the Proms concerts of the early 1950's.
When her facility with both hands returned, Cohen performed the Winter Legends Concerto and subsequently recorded it with the BBC under Raybould (26 November 1954). The music is not particularly facile, having a daunting keyboard part which must have taxed Cohen's abilities, since she was notorious for having small hands that prevented her from access to the major Romantic repertory. Angular and occasionally dissonant and wiry, Bax's music has an angular grace that seems typical of British music between the wars, the musical phenomenon described in detail in Constant Lambert's study, Music, Ho! The second movement features an extended antiphon between piano, strings and tympani. The horn part is rather distantly recorded. In three movements and an Epilogue (Molto cantabile), the energies appear to move from dark to light, a redemption from a long winter of discontent to a blazing promise of spring. The opening of the third movement, Molto moderato, could have influenced the sound-pictures of Alan Hovhaness.
Bax wrote solo piano pieces with Harriet Cohen in mind; in 1915 he composed A Mountain Mood, which Cohen recorded for Columbia, along with A Hill Tune, on 20 October 1942. A Mountain Mood: melody and variations, is a salon work akin to the Grieg lyric pieces, perhaps cross-fertilized by Debussy and a hint of Faure, maybe Percy Grainger. A Hill Tune exploits tinkling arpeggios in much the same way as its companion, a British answer to Ravel or Liszt's cascading water-pieces. Cohen's sensitive playing is not helped by Columiba's shrill compressed shellacs which still elicit a bit of hiss. The big work is really the Bax Viola Sonata, first premiered by Lionel Tertis and Bax in November, 1922. Cohen and violist William Primrose recorded the piece as part of an English Music Society project on 22 July 1937. Two outer slow movements frame a brilliant rondo marked Allegro energico ma non troppo presto. Walton adopted the same structure for his own Viola Concerto. Bax's writing for viola is quite expansive, reminiscent of the cross between academic and bravura style in Hindemith's Op. 11. Cohen has her moment in the announcement of the first movement second subject. The wicked aggression in the scherzo movement and the tenor of the opening movement may reveal more than a hint of Franck, though Bax is wittier in his rustic way. For those unfamiliar with Harriet Cohen's musicianship, the scherzo is proof enough of her capacity for unbuttoned ensemble playing. The last movement is a sometimes lugubrious affair, but it still offers Primrose an opportunity to demonstrate why he was the natural successor to Lionel Tertis. An obsessive riff in the viola eventually allows the textures to thin out, although the mood remains stormy. While the lacquers still suffer some tape hiss, the intensity of the playing — the yearning of the music — are never less than beguiling.
--Gary Lemco
Dutton CDBP 9751 mono, 76:33 (Distrib. Harmonia Mundi) ****:
As much a social as a musical document, this disc attests to the artistic as well as romantic liaison between pianist Harriet Cohen (1985-1967) and composer Arnold Bax, who abandoned his wife and children to engage, during WWI, in an extended love affair with Tobias Matthay pupil Cohen, who was some thirteen years his junior. Bax wrote several salon pieces as well as three large-scale concertos for Harriet Cohen. Cohen premiered the Symphonic Variations in in 1920, and then became the only pianist to champion the Winter Legends (1932) in the composer's lifetome. The original performance had Adrian Boult leading the BBC Symphony Orchestra. After Cohen injured her right wrist in 1948, Bax wrote a left-hand concerto for her with which she enjoyed some success at the Proms concerts of the early 1950's.
When her facility with both hands returned, Cohen performed the Winter Legends Concerto and subsequently recorded it with the BBC under Raybould (26 November 1954). The music is not particularly facile, having a daunting keyboard part which must have taxed Cohen's abilities, since she was notorious for having small hands that prevented her from access to the major Romantic repertory. Angular and occasionally dissonant and wiry, Bax's music has an angular grace that seems typical of British music between the wars, the musical phenomenon described in detail in Constant Lambert's study, Music, Ho! The second movement features an extended antiphon between piano, strings and tympani. The horn part is rather distantly recorded. In three movements and an Epilogue (Molto cantabile), the energies appear to move from dark to light, a redemption from a long winter of discontent to a blazing promise of spring. The opening of the third movement, Molto moderato, could have influenced the sound-pictures of Alan Hovhaness.
Bax wrote solo piano pieces with Harriet Cohen in mind; in 1915 he composed A Mountain Mood, which Cohen recorded for Columbia, along with A Hill Tune, on 20 October 1942. A Mountain Mood: melody and variations, is a salon work akin to the Grieg lyric pieces, perhaps cross-fertilized by Debussy and a hint of Faure, maybe Percy Grainger. A Hill Tune exploits tinkling arpeggios in much the same way as its companion, a British answer to Ravel or Liszt's cascading water-pieces. Cohen's sensitive playing is not helped by Columiba's shrill compressed shellacs which still elicit a bit of hiss. The big work is really the Bax Viola Sonata, first premiered by Lionel Tertis and Bax in November, 1922. Cohen and violist William Primrose recorded the piece as part of an English Music Society project on 22 July 1937. Two outer slow movements frame a brilliant rondo marked Allegro energico ma non troppo presto. Walton adopted the same structure for his own Viola Concerto. Bax's writing for viola is quite expansive, reminiscent of the cross between academic and bravura style in Hindemith's Op. 11. Cohen has her moment in the announcement of the first movement second subject. The wicked aggression in the scherzo movement and the tenor of the opening movement may reveal more than a hint of Franck, though Bax is wittier in his rustic way. For those unfamiliar with Harriet Cohen's musicianship, the scherzo is proof enough of her capacity for unbuttoned ensemble playing. The last movement is a sometimes lugubrious affair, but it still offers Primrose an opportunity to demonstrate why he was the natural successor to Lionel Tertis. An obsessive riff in the viola eventually allows the textures to thin out, although the mood remains stormy. While the lacquers still suffer some tape hiss, the intensity of the playing — the yearning of the music — are never less than beguiling.
--Gary Lemco
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