November Woods is a tone poem by Arnold Bax

November Woods is a tone poem by Arnold Bax, written in 1917. Ostensibly a musical depiction of nature, the work conveys something of the composer's turbulent emotional state arising from the disintegration of his marriage and his love affair with the pianist Harriet Cohen. According to the composer, the piece is not programmatic, but evokes mood rather than painting a picture or telling a story. The work was completed in November 1917, and received its first performance in Manchester, on 18 November 1920, given by the Hallé Orchestra conducted by Hamilton Harty. In The Manchester Guardian, Samuel Langford remarked on the "grandeur and singleness of conception" of the piece; he noted the influence of Wagner, but felt that the piece lacked the primeval sense of Wagner's music and instead had an appeal that was "intensely human". The work was given the following month at a Royal Philharmonic Society concert at the Queen's Hall, conducted by Harty. The anonymous critic in The Times wrote, "The whole thing impressed us by a skilful and rather stagey picture of 'the woods so wild' and rather too drawn out for the actual value of its musical ideas. WIKIPEDIA

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