Audition: Bax - Symphony No. 3 BBC PO/Handley, Chandos

Audition: Bax - Symphony No. 3

BBC Philharmonic Orchestra/Handley, Chandos* - 2002

Vernon Handley enjoyed a better recording set up than David Lloyd Jones and Jack Thomson and has, I think, very comfortable in the idiom. A pupil of Boult, Handley championed the composer.  He understood when to drive the music and when to drop into lyric vein.  It’s all in the scores, but Handley manages all the symphonies so well.  The result is a muscular, colourful and propulsive opening proposition. In particular the winds and brass are prominent and more forward in the recording.  Handley knows the sheer power of this music and uses Bax’s strength with both amplitude and a long twisting line.  Most impressive is this recording’s rendering of colour in this score, it was recorded in Studio 7 at New Broadcasting House in Manchester on 4 January 2002.

It is a score of few weak spots and even the anvil sounds how we might of heard it out of the blue.

This is an integrated and majestic reading made more convincing under Handley because of a closer recording.  There’s a freshness and vitality that neither Lloyd Jones or Thompson can manage.

The link between Bax and Vaughan Williams is not often underlined in the symphonies as much as here. Handley is a master of both though I suspect Bax was closer to Handley‘s heart. Most surprisingly Handley recorded this work as a BBC Music Magazine cover disc but it went so well it became part of the Chandos set.

Performance 10 out of 10

Interpretation 10 out of 10

Recording 10 out of 10.