Vox Boxes

During the long summers of the early 70s, my life was punctuated by a series of events which were mysterious and magnificent.  Every month or so there would arrive a huge parcel in the post.  It was heavy, and a profusion of stamps covered its surface.  With trembling hands I would prise open the cardboard to release the often garishly-coloured boxes inside.  They were all the same size, and seemed to be very much part of a huge procession of similarly designed boxes.  On the outside they often had a reproduction of a classical painting, Monet or Boucher, physically stuck on to the covering which was almost cubist in its delight in curious stippling and mock wood effects.

Inside the box which creaked delightfully as I opened it for the first time, attesting to its pristine state, were three, occasionally two records.  For these were Vox Boxes, treasure troves of the obscure.  Over the months and years I bought such gems as Buxtehude organ music, Haydn piano sonatas, Mendelssohn chamber music, all long before they became available again in the late seventies’ explosion of the record catalogue.  

These were relics of a past age of bright-eyed curiosity, when it seemed that nothing was alien to the encompassing human intellect.  Even early Haydn string quartets.  As well as unique recordings of the recondite, they were encapsulations of the era that produced them.

As capsules of aural nostalgia they are helped considerably by their limited sonic range, their boxy acoustics.  The string quartets in particular sound strangely enclosed, as if they had been hermetically sealed in amber like a latter-day scarab.  Somehow they sound like the 60s: recognisable yet distanced.  Each Vox Box became a Tutankhamen's tomb, preserving with miraculous freshness an ancient world.

Not that it was necessary to patronise the music-making itself.  The acoustics may be cramped, but the spirit which informs the performances often soars extraordinarily.  A glance at the labels explains why.  Nearly all of the players are middle European emigres.  Perhaps they were cheaper than established American artists.  But the latter’s loss is our gain.  As marginalised people, they seem to have felt an instinctive empathy with this music from the sidelines of art.  They were able to sing of their displacements and deracination through this ignored music.

And what music.  From the tortured drawing-room refinement of Mendelssohn’s later string quartets, to the perfumed subtleties of Couperin, the angular passion of Handel’s flute sonatas, and the small jewel-like perfection of Mozart’s piano variations – all are caught with a truth which is all the more moving for being fresh and unforced.

Now when I listen to these records, I hear not only those honest performance of twenty years ago, the sadness of the exile, and the power and tragedy of almost-great music.  I experience again what I felt a decade back, when music lay before me like a continent, huge, exotic and unexplored, when each new experience was as magical and full of possibilities as those wonderful Vox Boxes I received long summers ago.

(27.4.86)

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