Re: Minority of one?
TH's Gramophone review of the Del Mar Bax 6 seems to date from just before I started taking the magazine but in 10/69 he started his review of the Downes Bax 3 by stating "I had better say right away that I find myself unenthusiastic about Bax as a symphonist", continuing "there is so much indulgence in the orchestral colour, painting over the lack of anything really vital to say". Even the Epilogue, he thought, "touching as some of it is ... wears its welcome out, for me, at any rate". Since much of these are general comments about Bax's symphonies, rather than this specific one, we may suppose that he wrote about no.6 in a similar vein. He may have been influenced in this by Boult, who he knew well and who felt that the best of Bax was in the shorter symphonic poems (which he conducted superbly) rather than the symphonies (which he declined to record, though his NY premiere of no. 7 survives). But I doubt if this is the real reason why Richard Itter did not record all the Bax symphonies. People didn't think in terms of cycles back then and Itter aimed to make available as much unrecorded British music as possible, so no 3 or 4 because they had been recorded already. Likewise, he never did a Rubbra 5. And did collectors back then take Gramophone reviews as the ultimate words of wisdom and not investigate anything about which a Gramophone critic expressed doubts? Might the same readers not have also read the EMG Monthly Letter which gave the Downes Bax 3 2-star status (their maximum), Best of the Month listing and concluded that "anyone who does not know it should quickly purchase this fine spacious recording"? And concluded that the one reviewer was as likely to be right as the other, so the only answer was to hear the record?
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Minority of one? - Mikeh March 15, 2023, 12:44 pm
- Re: Minority of one? - Ralph Moore March 15, 2023, 2:26 pm
- Re: Minority of one? - Nick Barnard March 15, 2023, 6:53 pm
- Re: Minority of one? - Marc Bridle March 15, 2023, 10:33 pm
- Re: Minority of one? - Des Hutchinson March 16, 2023, 4:42 am
- Re: Minority of one? - Mikeh March 16, 2023, 11:21 am
- Re: Minority of one? - Ralph Moore March 18, 2023, 2:27 pm
- Re: Minority of one? - Mikeh March 20, 2023, 9:58 am
- Re: Minority of one? - Mikeh April 8, 2023, 9:14 am
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