Edward Elgar's name may be practically synonymous with musical Englishness, but his symphonic study 'Falstaff' shows that he was paying close attention to his continental contemporaries, especially Richard Strauss. The program of 'Falstaff,' drawing episodes from Shakespeare's 'Henry IV' and 'Henry V,' is like those of Strauss' own narrative tone poems in its depiction of minute detail--'Don Quixote' is the obvious comparison, as another musical portrayal of a knightly fool. But the differences are just as striking: unlike Strauss' often voluptuous, sensuous orchestration and harmony, Elgar is more restrained, and more compassionate toward his subject, setting a predominantly nostalgic tone. Falstaff is less a figure of humor here than a sentimental symbol of Olde England.
The English Northern Philharmonia under David Lloyd-Jones navigates Elgar's score with a great sense of style and narrative impulse. The big picture comes through musically even without knowing the program in detail; especially magical is the descent into dreamworld as Falstaff falls asleep, and Falstaff's death is a genuinely touching moment. Filling out the disc are the similarly nostalgia-tinged 'Sanguine Fan' ballet, and the 'Elegy for Strings,' its four and a half minutes seeming remarkably like one single, melancholy breath.

Classical Music

ELGAR: Enigma Variations / In the South / Coronation March

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

It takes an impressive performance for Elgar to come alive for me, as he does in this recording by Edo de Waart and the Royal Flemish Philharmonic, both subtle and fiery. The First Symphony, in particular, burns under a surface sheen, and “The Dream of Gerontius” is intensely played and firmly sung.

– New York Times

Sir Adrian Boult was a supreme interpreter of Elgar’s music, winning accolades and awards for performances and recordings. Boult championed his music throughout his conducting life following the composer’s prophetic words in a letter to Boult in 1920: “I feel that my reputation in the future is safe in your hands.” This release represents the only existing film of Boult conducting The Dream of Gerontius filmed in Canterbury Cathedral in 1968. This performance features a stellar cast of soloists: Dame Janet Baker, a leading interpreter of The Angel in The Dream of Gerontius, who recorded the role twice, John Shirley Quirk who, with Boult, recorded a definitive interpretation of Peter in The Kingdom, and Peter Pears, who recorded the work in 1972 under the direction of his close friend Benjamin Britten. This film uses the original BBC master which is far superior to the poor copies which have been in circulation over the years. This was the first classical music production filmed in color, for which Brian Large had secured eight out of the nine color TV cameras existing in the UK at that time. The film also includes a one hour documentary on Sir Adrian Boult as a bonus. The film was originally produced in 1989 to celebrate Sir Adrian Boult’s 100th anniversary.

After making several albums of chamber music by Brahms and Schubert, the cellist Marie-Elisabeth Hecker now records a large-scale concerto, showing the full range of her talent. Composed between 1918 and 1919, Elgar’s Concerto op.85 was poorly received at its first performance but has since become established as one of the key works in the cello repertoire. To complete the programme, Marie-Elisabeth Hecker rejoins her chamber music partners, the violinists Carolin Widmann and David McCarroll, the violist Pauline Sachse and the pianist Martin Helmchen, in Elgar’s Piano Quintet, composed at the same time as the Concerto and premiered in London in 1919.

This release is a re-issue of a 1992 recording, when Richard Hickox was serving as Associate Guest Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra. Elgar wrote his Caractacus in 1898 for the Leeds Festival. The work shows his invention and orchestration skills, foreshadowing his most famous work, the Enigma Variations. A review by Gramophone asserted that “There can be nothing but praise for Richard Hickox’s fluent, sensitive direction and enthusiastic, full-blooded backcloth provided by the LSO… A typically ripe, wide-ranging Chandos recording into the bargain.”

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REVIEW:

Although the work itself is uneven, this 1992 recording is yet another classic recording from the late maestro, and well worth hearing when done as brilliantly as this.

– MusicWeb International

Classical Music

The Philadelphia Orchestra and the Wanamaker Organ.

More than 80 years after its composition, the Jongen Symphonie Concertante is heard as performed on the organ for which it was written. In a gala concert, Maestro Rossen Milanov and the Philadelphia Orchestra join Grand Court Organist Peter Richard Conte. Also heard are works by Dupre and Elgar in this long-awaited and much heralded concert of 27 September, 2008.

SOMM Recordings announces the release of The Reeds by Severn Side, a ravishing collection of choral works by Edward Elgar, sung by the Chapel Choir of the Royal Hospital Chelsea, led by director William Vann, accompanied by organist Joshua Ryan. Of the 18 featured works, six are first recordings. They traverse Elgar’s remarkable ascension from lowly lawyer’s clerk to self-taught composer to Master of the King’s Musick. And chart the impeccable fusing of his Roman Catholic heritage with the Anglican church tradition to which he contributed several masterpieces. They also reveal what Vaughan Williams described as the “mystery and [the] miracle” of Elgar’s flowering into the music laureate of Edwardian England, as Andrew Neill, former Chairman of the Elgar Society, observes in his authoritative booklet notes.

Alongside juvenilia such as the 16-year-old Elgar’s Credo on Themes from Symphonies 5, 7 and 9 by Beethoven (in James Olsen’s completion) and Drake’s Broughton, to which the 73-year-old composer would return in his Nursery Suite, are diverse works that reveal growing confidence, including early settings of the Mass and first recordings (in English) of the Op.2 trilogy: Jesu, word of God Incarnate; Jesu, Lord of Life and Glory; Jesu, Meek and Lowly. The masterpiece bitonal setting of Tennyson, There is Sweet Music, one of Elgar’s self-described “choral songs”, is a highlight, alongside twin peaks of his anthem writing: O Hearken Thou (heard as the Latin motet, Intende voci orationis meae) and substantial Give Unto the Lord. William Vann and the Chapel Choir of the Royal Hospital Chelsea’s previous SOMM releases include In Remembrance, described by Gramophone as “almost unbearably moving”, and as “an album that will have enduring value into the future” by MusicWeb International. Carols from Chelsea was a Best Classical Christmas Release, praised for its “model singing”, in The Guardian.

Somm Recordings is delighted to present a revelatory collection of orchestral songs by Sir Edward Elgar performed by two of today’s most exciting young singers – mezzo-soprano Kathryn Rudge and baritone Henk Neven – accompanied by the BBC Concert Orchestra conducted by Barry Wordsworth. The Hills of Dreamland takes its title from a line in Elgar’s well-known setting, beautifully still and beseeching, of Arthur L Salmon’s Pleading. Historically the least regarded part of Elgar’s output, his songs contain a treasure-trove of vocal gems and here receive performances of insight, imagination and emotional directness. The Op.59 Song Cycle is an exemplary case in point, by turns quietly radiant, touchingly nostalgic and achingly melancholic. Two settings of poems by Elgar’s wife – the richly orchestrated The Wind at Dawn and celebratory The King’s Way– show Elgar at his most evocative and ebullient. Sombre and powerful, The Pipes of Pan boasts colorful imagery and driving rhythmic energy, The River and The Torch wholly Elgarian in their wonderful sonorities. A first recording of the orchestral version of the marching song Follow the Colours shows Elgar at his most patriotic. The complete incidental music for a 1901 staging of WB Yeats’ Grania and Diarmid offers a rare opportunity to experience the full gamut of Elgar’s moving and dramatic evocation of a timeless tale of love in the ancient Irish myth. A bonus album of recordings made under the auspices of the Elgar Society showcases soprano Nathalie de Montmollin and pianist Barry Collett in a collection of piano-accompanied songs. It includes first recordings of the piano version of ‘Winter’ from The Mill Wheel and the world-weary tread of Muleteer’s Serenade, setting words from Cervantes’ Don Quixote.

Available for the first time in the United States, this set from the Sony Classical Masters Series features Leonard Slatkin conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Philharmonia Orchestra and the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra (featuring Pinchas Zukerman on violin) in the works of Elgar including Symphonies nos. 1 & 2, Violin Concerto, Cello Concerto, and “Enigma” Variations.

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Leonard Slatkin's Elgar recordings are among the best recordings of the works in the past 20 years. Slatkin's understanding of Elgar's music and his ability to articulate both its grandly monumental and deeply intimate qualities is unsurpassed among his contemporaries and his interpretations are marvelously controlled and wonderfully expressive. Of course, Slatkin is aided by the strong and sympathetic playing of the London Philharmonic and by the soulful virtuosity of violinist Pinchas Zukerman and cellist Janos Starker. And RCA does capture all their performances in clear, deep, and warm digital sound. While no one who loves Elgar's music should be without Barbirolli and Boult's recordings, anyone who loves Elgar's music would like Slatkin's recordings.

– All Music Guide

"The old master conducts a performance of Elgar's Enigma Variations from 1982, in his first appearance with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, complete with especially entertaining rehearsal excerpts and a brief interview." – The New York Times

BERNSTEIN CONDUCTS ELGAR

Edward Elgar: Enigma Variations, Op. 36

BBC Symphony Orchestra
Leonard Bernstein, conductor

Recorded live at the Royal Festival Hall, 14 April 1982

Bonus:
- Rehearsal documentary including an interview with Leonard Bernstein

Picture format: NTSC 4:3
Sound format: Enhanced Stereo
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Menu language: English
Subtitles: French, German, Japanese
Booklet notes: English, French, German
Running time: 65 mins
No. of DVDs: 1

This is an Enhanced CD, which contains both regular audio tracks and multimedia computer files.

Slatkin's devotion to, and understanding of Elgar is again impressively evident in his recording of the First Symphony. RCA have given him a richer, clearer sound than for his splendid interpretation of the Second (8/89). Like Menuhin, on his recent Virgin Classics recording, Slatkin stays nearer to Elgar's own handling of this work. The brisk tempo of the second movement for example, is very much in the composer's own manner. The scintillating playing of the London Philharmonic in this movement makes it a virtuoso demonstration of Elgar's skill as an orchestrator.

Where Slatkin brings his own view of the symphony most firmly into focus is in the first movement. Without in any way sentimentalizing the music, or pulling it about, he makes the listener—this listener, at any rate painfully aware of its underlying note of tragedy. Some idyll of happiness seems repeatedly to be just eluding Elgar's grasp—every time it seems he will reach it, it proves to be a mirage and vanishes. In the poignant coda, most beautifully played, he accepts that his paradise is lost. Only Barbirolli, in his earlier 1957 Pye recording with the Halle (currently unavailable), brings home so touchingly the resigned despair of this movement.

The symphony's Adagio, paradoxically, emerges in this performance as marginally less moving. Just why, it is hard to say. It is marvelously played, especially the interplay of oboe, clarinet, flute and bassoon, and there is a real ppp in the last six bars. But Slatkin, though only in the slightest degree, misses the ultimate atmosphere of the rapture with which this movement is enveloped. The finale, on the other hand, is totally satisfying.

The performance of In the South is stunningly successful, brisker in tempo than either Downes for Conifer or Sinopoli for DG and as exciting as either. Again, the LPO's playing is first-rate, particularly the lower strings, and the recording picks up all the detail, such as the importance of the glockenspiel part. In all, a most distinguished addition to the Elgar discography.

-- Gramophone [6/1991]