William Alwyn [photo: Lyrita BAX. Symphony No. 7. London Philharmonic Orch- estra conducted by Raymond Leppard. Lyrita SRCS83 ([2.76)

Lyrita seem determined this year to put the British symphony on the map. Hot on the heels of the Moeran G minor (New Philharmonia/Boult—SRCS70, 7/75) comes this new issue, completing the cycle of Bax symphonies on record. It forms a splendid coda to the series, since in my view the Seventh is one of Bax's finest orchestral compositions. He wrote it in 1938-9 and in it virtually bade farewell to his muse; as he himself felt only too keenly, dear Cynara's dear reign was ended, and almost nothing of any real consequence came from his pen between then and his death in 1953. Yet what, under the circumstances, is so surprising is that the Symphony bears no witness whatever to any incipient decline in inspiration or technique, nor (except in the vaguely autumnal second movement) to the expected undercurrents of satiety, nostalgia or regret, still less to any raging at the dying of the light. In fact the first and last movements are music of nothing so much as freshness, virility and joy, even of ecstasy which for Box was the sine qua non of all true creative experience; Delius's Song of Summer is perhaps a near parallel, and in this respect the quotation given at the end of the sleeve-note from a dark and pessimistic poem of Bax's own on the onset of autumn and old age is rather wide of the mark; this may be the prevailing mood, say, of Ireland's Housman setting We'll to the woods no more or his piano Prelude in E flat, but not of Bax's Seventh Symphony. The finale, for instance, now looks back to the festal glitter of the corresponding movement in the Fourth Symphony, now looks forward (in the theme and variations) to the passacaglia finale of Vaughan Williams's Fifth which, of course, had yet to be written. There is a real and remarkable affinity here, both of spirit and technique. Many sleights-of-hand, too, to delight the analytical ear—the way for example in which the 'tail' of the first theme—already used to form part of the variations' theme—at one point turns into a characteristic woodwind ostinato to accompany a full return of the latter (p. 182 of the newly-published Chappell study score). And, indeed, the first movement strikes me as one of the most beautifully-fashioned sonata structures ever conceived—scarcely a paragraph, even a phrase, which is not related in some way to the four basic thematic premises. Little enough here of the oft-criticised Baxian diffuseness; whether viewed as symphony or symphonic poem, the movement satisfies on either count (surely not even Stanford would have been able to fault it!). The material, too, is distinguished—the lyrical D major cello theme is gloriously full-hearted—and the orchestral canvas is prodigal of magic, mystic touches well described by Lewis Foreman in his sleeve-note as "an ageing man's physical enjoyment of the waves smashing on the shore, the Northern light and the wild coastline (the west of Scotland) with the dim purple shapes of the islands out to sea". A flame still burns behind the music; here is Bax memorably re-living his last glimpses of a faery sea, of sunsets in the far West, of the Glassy Isle and the deep apple-garths of Avalon.

Leppard gives a fine, workmanlike performance, although there are moments when I cannot help questioning his temperamental closeness to the general mood and idiom of this music. He is expertly recorded : brass kept well under control, horns wonderfully mellow, only the strings lack something in immediacy here and there. Perhaps now Lyrita may start investigating some of the lesser-known Bax orchestral works, notably the magnificent early Spring Fire, Nympholept and Summer Music in which the composer's nature-mysticism found its richest and most intense expression. C.P.