I loved Tintagel from the moment I heard it as a schoolboy, and was glad, soon afterwards, to visit the actual Cornish landscape so effortlessly conjured up by the glittering opening, with its sea swell and seagull flutes. It was disappointing, though, to realise eventually that nothing else in Bax is anything like as good as this tone poem, unfolded so beautifully here in a Festival Hall concert by Vanska. Nor does anything in Tintagel quite match its first few minutes. The pleasures of Rachmaninov are far more evenly distributed. Vanska’s account of the Third Symphony — from the same concert — is a marvel of measured, uninflated eloquence.

LPO 0036

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