Excellent recording of piano tone by Chandos on this disc, the second in Eric Parkin's magister ial survey of Bax's piano music. There is no distortion in treble or bass and there is an intimacy about the performances which is well suited to the highly personal idiom of the music. To hear Par kin's involved and sympathetic interpretations is to realize how dependent Bax is on a truly under standing performer if his music is to live up to the claims of its champions. It was the same story with Margaret Fingerhut's recent magnificent performance of his Symphonic Variations. Bax less than almost any composer can survive bad performances.
These two Sonatas, the last Bax wrote, are splendid works which will probably be new to many listeners, as they were to me. Both are relatively short, 25 and 18 minutes respectively, and that is part of their strength. Bax's tendency to prolixity is his major deficiency; so many of his works lose their grip on our imagination simply because they last too long and flog his ideas to death. Not so here. The outer movements of Sonata No. 4, in particular, are notably concise almost terse, and even the ten minutes of the first movement of the Sonata No. 3 keeps on the rails while giving a delightful impression of Baxian rhapsodic waywardness. The slow movements of both sonatas are outstandingly attractive examples of Bax in his mood of lyrical nature worship, a mood that seems to have been intensified by his amorous preoccupation of the moment. These movements are seascapes, with a romantic expressiveness similar to that of the orchestral The Garden of Fand.
Eric Parkin is equally effective in the three short pieces also included on this disc. These represent Bax at his most appealing and picturesque, one of the few British composers of his generation to compose really well and naturally for the piano. I cannot help feeling that these piano discs will do more for Bax's reputation than some of the orchestral works which Chandos have recorded.'