The major work on this disc, Winter Legends, was inspired by Bax’s meeting with and admiration for Sibelius, though the Finnish composer’s influence on the music is actually minimal. More, the work reflects a change in composing venue and a new muse, from fantasy-filled Ireland and his affair with the flamboyant young pianist Harriet Cohen (for whom, nonetheless, all three works were written), north to Scotland with the devoted and supportive Mary Gleaves and the more austere northern influence. Here the dreams that Bax attempts to capture are primal and less ethereal: “Legends that were told or sung / In many a smoky fireside nook / Of Iceland, in the ancient day / By wandering Saga-man or Scald.”

Neither symphony nor concerto, Winter Legends is an extended tone poem with the piano treated as a prominent orchestral element. Its biggest interpretive challenge is to keep it from sounding episodic, especially the free-form first movement. Judd and Wass enforce structure with swift tempos and an emphasis on vitality rather than fantasy. They are fully five minutes faster than Bryden Thompson with Margaret Fingerhut on Chandos, and more than a minute faster than Harriet Cohen’s own performance rescued from a 1954 BBC transcription by Michael Dutton. For the most part, Judd’s choices work. While some may prefer Thompson’s more expansive (and romantic) approach, there is no denying the excitement that Judd and Wass generate in the opening movement. Moreover, the rather bleak Lento, molto espressivo movement, with its violent central climax, is all the more effective at their decidedly faster pace. However, the third movement—which shows the influence of the Russians that Bax admired, especially Rachmaninoff—is less icily mysterious at the opening. It is also less integrated throughout than Thompson and Fingerhut’s more molded approach, and the horn-dominated climax seems less inevitable. Finally, the Epilogue; surely it supports more weight and space than Judd and Wass are willing to give it, even if they match Cohen’s tempo. Thompson and Fingerhut take almost half again the time to weave the ending, and the Scriabinesque burst of light at the end must certainly have been what Bax envisioned. Two small Bax-sanctioned cuts in the second and third movements of this new release—the longest, nine measures in length—may or may not be an issue to collectors. Cohen made them.

The 1933 Saga Fragment, a reworking for Cohen of the Piano Quartet of 11 years earlier, is also Bax occupied in sterner matters. Bax called it “rather a tough pill” and Cmore....

Review By Roger Hecht,American Record Guide,September 2011

…Naxos’s sound is closer to the listener, more solid, articulated, and powerful, and more detailed than the distant and blended Chandos acoustic.

Andrew Burns’s notes are up to Naxos’s best standard and are especially good on Winter Legends.

To read the complete review, please visit American Record Guide online.