Bax Symphony 7 and Tintagel Orchestral CD - Royal Scottish National Orchestra

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Perhaps the best known of all his orchestral works, Bax’s Tintagel is a vivid tonal impression of the castle-crowned cliff of Tintagel in Cornwall. Here the legends of King Arthur and the scenic grandeur of the Atlantic Ocean fired Bax’s imagination into producing some of the most vivid sea music ever written. Twenty years later Bax embarked upon his seventh and final symphony, relishing the Celtic tradition and combining playful exuberance with haunting wistfulness, serenity, and poise, a true representation of the culmination of his musical achievements.

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Lloyd-Jones caps his Bax cycle with the composer's last symphony, a grand, vibrant work that adds new-found simplicity to the often gnarly six that preceded it. He adopts more flowing tempos than his chief rivals on CD, Bryden Thomson and Vernon Handley, both on Chandos, with excellent effect in sustaining interest during the long slow movement, and he makes the closing bars a "farewell" moving in context. Lloyd-Jones also generates a layer of greater excitement than the competition, thanks to the cutting brass and horns of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. The same virtues are present in Tintagel, Bax's best-known tone poem. Its depiction of the grandeur of the sea, cliff and rocks of the Cornish coast is brilliantly orchestrated, the swells and crashes of the orchestra and its percussion section, vividly depicting the sea pounding against the timeless rocks, a battle of the elements that inspired Bax to pen his most appealing work. --Dan Davis