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The strand that connects all three composers on this characteristically bold Chandos release is Australia. Hubert Clifford (1904-59) and his good friend John Gough (1903-51) hail from Victoria and Tasmania respectively (and both, spookily enough, ended up in London working for the BBC),whereas Englishman Edgar Bainton (1880-1956) emigrated to Sydney in 1934 to take up the directorship of the New South Wales State Conservatory. Of the two large-scale symphonies so eloquently realised here by Vernon Handley and the BBC Philharmonic, Bainton's second of 1939-40 is perhaps the more striking. Some 27 minutes in duration, it's cast in a single movement made up of a dozen sections. Fortunately, the symphonic argument is easily grasped, and Bainton's unfailingly evocative and imaginative scoring falls most gratefully on the ear. Clifford's
Symphony 1940 is impressive too, though its bitter-sweet lyricism and unashamedly epic demeanour unavoidably prompt comparisons with Walton's masterly first symphony of a few years previous (next to which it seems like pretty small fry). Gough's miniature
Serenade (written in 1931 for Clifford's wedding) forms a toothsome bonne bouche between the two main courses. Terrific Chandos sound complements the outstandingly sympathetic music-making.
--Andrew Achenbach
