SOMM RECORDINGS is delighted to announce the release of Elgar from America, Volume I featuring historic recordings by a legendary cellist, two American orchestras and a trio of the 20th century’s greatest conductors. The results offer a fascinating transatlantic perspective on a titan of British music and includes two masterpieces and a symphonic study which Elgar considered his best orchestral piece.

Elgar visited America annually from 1905-07 and again in 1911 where his music found articulate champions and a place in the country’s affections, the trio of his Pomp and Circumstance March in D an essential, long-established part of ceremonies accompanying America’s graduation tradition. The featured recordings date from the 1940s and have been restored and remastered by the multi-award-winning audio restoration engineer Lani Spahr, who also provides informative booklet notes.

The Enigma Variations were, by far, America’s favourite Elgar work in the first decade of the last century. The “fleet, error-free performance” by the NBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Arturo Toscanini in New York’s Radio City Studio on November 5, 1949 appears here on album for the first time. New in any form is Artur Rodzin´ski’s never-before released October 10, 1943 Carnegie Hall account of Falstaff Symphonic Study in C minor with the New York Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra.

Cellist Gregor Piatigorsky joined the NYP-SO under John Barbirolli for a November 10, 1940 Carnegie Hall performance of the Cello Concerto. Piatigorsky never recorded the work commercially and this is the only known existing recording of him playing the piece. Lani Spahr’s previous restorations of historic Elgar recordings for SOMM Recordings include Elgar Rediscovered and the four-disc set Elgar Remastered which featured recordings from the composer’s own collection and was hailed by Audiophilia as “a fascinating achievement which will have you wishing for more”.

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REVIEW:

Elgar enthusiasts will find it intriguing, not least because it offers performances by some performers who one does not normally associate with Elgar’s music. This particular Toscanini performance of ‘Enigma’ is new to CD and Rodzinski’s Falstaff has never been issued commercially in any format. It’s also healthy and stimulating to hear performances from outside the English performing tradition. There is some surface noise at times but in general Lani Spahr’s transfers seem to me to have been extremely successful. There is applause after each work but otherwise the audiences are commendably quiet.

– MusicWeb International

ELGAR: ENIGMA VARIATIONS, POMP

ELGAR: ENIGMA VARIATIONS, OP.

From Arturo Toscanini and Sir John Barbirolli to Riccardo Muti and Antonio Pappano in our own time, Italian-heritage performers have often brought special qualities of sympathy and understanding to Edward Elgar’s (1857-1934) music. Now comes a new recording made in the ‘boot’ of southern Italy, lending Mediterranean warmth and passion to a trio of Elgarian masterpieces. The Sicilian-born cellist Giovanni Sollima has made well-received albums for Brilliant Classics of music by Offenbach (94475) and by his father Eliodoro Sollima (96287). His latest recording, made at the Teatro Politeama in the one-time ‘lace capital’ of Europe, Catanzaro, illuminates one of the core works of the cello literature with an affecting sense of line and sensitivity to the melancholy introversion which colors every bar of the Concerto composed by Elgar in the wake of the First World War. Twenty years earlier, Elgar’s reputation was secured with audiences across Europe and America through the whirlwind success of his “Enigma” Variations. The stoic beauty of ‘Nimrod’, the gentle wit of ‘Dorabella’ and the nervous excitement and pride of the autobiographical finale spoke directly to listeners who would never know the composer or his ‘friends pictured within’. The agitated, impassioned voice of Elgar in the Variations belonged to its end-of-Empire time and place, orchestrated with a mastery which would soon draw the admiration of Richard Strauss and many more musicians on the other side of the English Channel. Even that quintessential expression of Englishness, the first of five marches which Elgar collected under the Shakesperean banner of “Pomp and Circumstance” and later repurposed to set ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ for the finale of his Coronation Ode, won the composer standing ovations when he conducted it in concerts across mainland Europe. Under the affectionate baton of their music director Filippo Arlia, the Orchestra Filarmonica della Calabria interpret Elgar’s music with a sensitivity and extroversion worthy of the composer.

This re-release of an SWRmusic bestseller contains Elgar’s first symphony, which marks the first real breakthrough of English symphonic music. The first performance was given by the Hallé Orchestra conducted by Hans Richter in Manchester, England, on 3 December 1908. It was widely known that Elgar had been planning a symphony for more than ten years, and the announcement that he had finally completed it aroused enormous interest. The critical reception was enthusiastic, and the public response unprecedented. The symphony achieved what The Musical Times described as "immediate and phenomenal success", with a hundred performances in Britain, continental Europe and America within just over a year of its première. Reviewers lauded it as the most noble work ever penned by an English composer. The present recording, under the baton of Sir Roger Norrington exemplifies his style which got to be known as "Stuttgart Sound".

ELGAR: VIOLIN CONCERTO, ETC Z

Though made less than a decade before his last studio versions for EMI (regarded by many collectors as classics), these 1968 Elgar Symphony recordings for Lyrita reveal a younger and more energized Adrian Boult--especially so in Symphony No. 2, where the earlier recording's swagger and bite would be mellowed by a greater refinement and nuance (Boult's scrupulous attention to the subtle timbres of Elgar's orchestration at times make the music sound almost Debussyian).

Symphony No. 1 clearly was Boult's less favored of the two, and his EMI recording suffered from a degree of stiffness (especially compared to Barbirolli). But the Lyrita version has a raw, edgy quality--with swifter tempos and snappier rhythms--that's most welcome. The London Philharmonic sounds slightly less polished in 1968 than in 1976, but the playing is still excellent. Some collectors may find Lyrita's close and clear recorded sound preferable to EMI's plushy resonance (though the latter has greater dynamic range). As it stands, this Lyrita set, priced at 2-for-1, is an essential acquisition for Elgarians (and Boulters).

--Victor Carr Jr, ClassicsToday.com

In days of yore, when the piano served as ye olde home entertainment center, a great demand existed for small pieces that were easy on the ear and required from the pianist just enough ability to get around the keyboard. Like many composers, Elgar was not averse to earning a quick buck, and he happily churned out such keyboard fluff or revamped pre-existing compositions when he was not writing symphonies, oratorios, and other serious fare.

Yet even the slightest piano trifles can sound like mini-masterpieces when the performer takes the trouble to play them artistically. And that's precisely what Ashley Wass does. His instinctive, natural sounding rubato and gift for lyrical inflection ennoble pieces such as Une idylle (originally for violin and piano) and Carissima. The Sonatina's brisk second movement is imaginatively pointed, and seems to dance off of the page.

Although the Enigma Variations' textural complexity and orchestral ingenuity are considerably compromised in Elgar's keyboard reworking (those horrid silent-movie tremolos in the finale!), much of the music proves quite effective in purely pianistic terms. For example, you might consider Variation Eleven (G.R.S.) the love child of Brahms and Rachmaninov, while Variation Three (R.B.T.) takes on a more austere personality. Without the orchestra's sustaining power, the theme and the famous Ninth Variation (Nimrod) can easily fall apart, yet Wass' concentrated phrasing, chord voicings, and control of dynamics substantiate his slow tempos. There's enough Elgar piano music to fill another volume; will Naxos and Wass follow suit?

--Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

The British composer Edward Elgar wrote a great deal more than just his “Pomp & Circumstance” marches: his highly diverse oeuvre encompasses symphonies, concertos, chamber works, piano music and numerous choral works (oratorios, cantatas and partsongs). On this release, partsongs by Elgar can be heard with and without accompaniment as part of a representative selection of live and studio recordings. The album begins with the song cycle “From the Bavarian Highlands” op. 27; its six cheerful numbers were written while Elgar and his wife were on holiday in Garmisch in 1895. Alice Elgar had sketched verses from Bavarian folk melodies, and Upper Bavarian songs and dances can be heard in her husband’s settings. These were happy memories of carefree holidays in a region rich in music and full of fine landscapes. The Bavarian Radio Chorus, conducted by Howard Arman, sings the songs in their original version with piano accompaniment (the orchestral version came later). As a composer of English-language choral songs, Elgar is still little-known on the European mainland; in the United Kingdom, however, the situation is very different. The country has long had a lively choral scene, focusing primarily on English music – from Purcell and Handel to Hubert Parry, Charles Villiers Stanford and Elgar, all the way to Benjamin Britten and today’s contemporary composers. The program on this release has been compiled and conducted by the Englishman Howard Arman, one of today’s most knowledgeable experts on British choral music and artistic director of the Bavarian Radio Chorus, and these recordings should do much to boost the popularity of this highly appealing music on the European mainland as well.

Sir Andrew Davis takes his multi-award-winning Elgar discography to the next level with breathtaking interpretations of Falstaff, Elgar’s most accomplished and characteristic work, and several orchestral songs, with exemplary support from the BBC Philharmonic, all recorded in surround-sound. Owing to its technical challenges and more complex harmonic language, the composer always had a high opinion of Falstaff, saying that he had enjoyed writing i Gramophonet ‘more than any other music I have ever composed and perhaps for that reason it may prove to be among my best efforts’. His earlier music for Grania and Diarmid pays tribute to the Irish legend of Diarmuid and Grainne; the Funeral March is probably Elgar’s noblest creation, and echoes the popular Pomp and Circumstance Marches. The various less well-known songs, given heroic interpretations by the baritone Roderick Williams OBE, span the multiple facets of Elgar’s style, from the stern and dramatic impressions of Op. 60 to the satirical and impish jollity of ‘Kindly do not SMOKE’.

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REVIEW:

This is a superbly perceptive traversal of Elgar's Falstaff, evincing a strength of purpose, emotional candor, and meticulous attention to detail. Right from the outset there's an irresistibly idiomatic swagger, acquity, and temperament. Baritone Roderick Williams is at his eloquent best in an attractive selection of orchestral songs.

– Gramophone

SOMM RECORDINGS is delighted to announce Elgar from America, Volume II: the first commercial release of three historic performances from 1940s’ New York featuring legendary Elgarian interpreters including violinist Yehudi Menuhin and conductors Malcolm Sargent and Arturo Toscanini at the helm of the NBC Symphony Orchestra. The results offer a fascinating transatlantic perspective on a titan of British music while revealing his musical legacy in a country he visited annually from 1905-07 and again in 1911. The featured recordings date from the first half of the 1940s and have been restored and remastered by the multi-award-winning audio restoration engineer Lani Spahr, who also provides informative booklet notes. Menuhin, long associated with Elgar since his 1932 recording of the Violin Concerto, is heard here in a 1945 performance of the work, abbreviated to fit radio constraints of time. It is conducted by Sargent who also leads an account of Cockaigne (In London Town) Concert-Overture from the same year. Toscanini’s 1940 performance of the Introduction and Allegro for Strings marks the only time he conducted it with the NBC SO, joined here by Mischa Mischakoff and Edwin Bachmann violins, Carlton Cooley viola, Frank Miller cello. Elgar from America, Volume I (ARIADNE 5005) was hailed by Classical Music Daily as “a fine start to this historic cycle” while MusicWeb International called it “a model of one of the things the album should be doing: filling the medium to capacity with engaging and/or controversial interpretations that one cannot simply over-hear... Essential listening.”

Starring Moscow Symphony Orchestra, Konstantin Krimetz, Capella Istropolitana.

For countless people over several generations, the celebration of the Advent-Christmas-Epiphany season begins with the annual St. Olaf Christmas Festival, a century-old tradition of the college. The first festival was a musical program for the college community planned and directed by F. Melius Christiansen, founder of the St. Olaf Music Department. The festival continues as an outgrowth of Christian conviction and an expression of the rich musical heritage at St. Olaf, a college of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The 2021 St. Olaf Christmas Festival features the St. Olaf Orchestra, St. Olaf Choir, St. Olaf Cantorei, St. Olaf Chapel Choir, Manitou Singers, and Viking Chorus, performing as both individual groups and as a massed ensemble. In 1981, Steven Amundson joined the St. Olaf College faculty and became conductor of the St. Olaf Orchestra, a position he has held for 40 years. With Amundson set to retire this spring, St. Olaf College honors him for his years of service and dedication as he conducts his final St. Olaf Christmas Festival.

“Although Elgar was a highly accomplished violinist, he wrote no mature string chamber music until, at the end of his creative life, he produced three major works: a violin sonata, a piano quintet and a string quartet. Both outer movements of the quartet are full of mercurial changes of mood; both end at the last minute in the major, the finale with an exhilarating display of renewed energy. In between comes an intermezzo marked ‘Piacevole’, ‘peacefully’ – a pastoral C major interlude between the two stormy outer movements. Alice Elgar was particularly fond of this movement, and it was played at her funeral in 1920. In 2002, I arranged the slow movement for string orchestra and George Vass conducted it that year at the Deal Festival. The remainder of the Quartet was orchestrated in 2010. The substantial part of the arrangement is the addition of a double bass part, but I have also thickened the upper parts in a number of places. At two points in the first movement and at the end of the Andante I have preserved the original writing for solo strings. The arrangement was commissioned by the John S. Cohen Foundation.” (David Matthews) “In 2019 English Symphony Orchestra were asked to give the official 100th Anniversary performance of the Elgar Cello Concerto. It was at that concert that Wallfisch met composer Donald Fraser, whose choral arrangement of Elgar’s Sea Pictures was being featured on the same concert. Wallfisch suggested that perhaps Fraser arranged and orchestrate a few of Elgar’s shorter works for cello and strings, and over the following year the project expanded in scope to finally comprise the eleven-movement suite heard here.” (Kenneth Woods)