Dance in the Sun is the second of Four Orchestral Pieces that Bax wrote in 1912–13, the others being Pensive Twilight, From the Mountains of Home and The Dance of Wild Irravel. The first complete performance was given by the Queen’s Hall Orchestra under Geoffrey Toye on 20th March 1914, but they then remained unplayed as a set for one hundred years, when Sir Andrew Davis recorded them with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra in May 2014 (available on Chandos CHAN 10829). In the meantime, in 1928, Bax had revised them as Three Pieces for small orchestra, omitting the fourth number and renaming the others: Dance in the Sun was transposed from E major to F and became Dance in the Sunlight. The manuscript of the original Four Orchestral Pieces was presented to the British Library by Harriet Cohen in 1960 (Add. MS 50175) and forms the basis for the present arrangement.
