This fairytale melodrama was adapted from a book by Algernon Blackwood A Prisoner in Fairyland for a West End theatre production staged during World War 1 with music by Elgar. Based on a new score which has been adapted by Sir Andrew Davis who also here conducts the Scottish Chamber Orchestra this is the most comprehensive recorded version to date. The two-disc set includes the incidental music with narrative by Simon Callow and an extended suite of freestanding orchestral movements and songs.

"Those who love this score as much as Elgar did - and I do - will welcome this new recording. ... All Elgarians must hear this superb set." – Paul Corfield Godfrey, MusicWeb International

"Performance: ***** Recording: **** This is a very valuable addition to the Elgar discography.” – Calum MacDonald, BBC Music [1/2012]

“[L]ovingly played by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and features the excellent baritone soloist Roderick Williams.” – Andrew Clark, Financial Times [12/8-9/2012]

“Elgar’s score is enchanting – and Davis and the SCO deliver it with evident affection.” – Hugh Canning, The Sunday Times (Culture Magazine) [11/11/2012]

“Davis secures absolutely first-rate results from the Scottish CO. Elin Manahan Thomas’s light silvery soprano could hardly be more suited to the parts of the laughter and Jane-Anne, while Roderick Williams is in glorious voice throughout. Everything has been captured by the microphones with ingratiating amplitude, bloom and glow.” – Andrew Achenbach, Gramophone [11/2012]

"[T]he songs are delivered with just the right lightness of touch by soprano Elin Manahan Thomas and baritone Roderick Williams. ***" – Andrew Clements, The Guardian [10/26/2012]

Classical Music

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.

This is the best of me wrote Edward Elgar in 1900 at the end of the manuscript of The Dream of Gerontius. This impressive and modern new recording of Elgar's magnum opus by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and conductor Nicholas Collon features alongside mezzo-soprano Christine Rice, tenor John Findon and baritone Roderick Williams, singers from five different choirs: Helsinki Music Centre Choir, Cambridge University Symphony Chorus, Dominante, Helsinki Chamber Choir and Alumni of the Choir of Clare College Cambridge.

That there is indeed something of the ethereal, of the timeless, and of the indefinable pervading all of the music heard on this CD instantly calls into question our shared notions of what the term Elegy actually signifies. Here the listener will encounter none of the unutterable despair of, for example, Samuel Barber's great Adagio for Strings, or the tortured valediction of Richard Strauss' Metamorphosen, but rather an introspection and wistfulness of an altogether gentler sort. As the poet Thomas Gray expressed it in his Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1751), "Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid some heart once pregnant with celestial fire; Hands that the rod of empire might have swayed, or waked to ecstasy the living lyre

After tackling Schumann, Liszt, Brahms, Schoenberg and Hindemith, Ulf Wallin and Roland Pontinen now focus their attention to the late-romantic English composer Edward Elgar. 'Mot d'amour', which takes it's title from one of his early compositions for violin, presents a substantial part of Elgar's output for violin and piano, which spans his entire career. Best known for his symphonic and choral works, Elgar is also the composer of chamber works that, although few in number, attain a high standard. The Violin Sonata, a mature composition contemporary with his two other major chamber pieces, is regarded by Elgar connoisseurs as one of his masterpieces. Inspired by Brahms's sonatas, Elgar's own, composed in the peaceful surroundings of his rented cottage in the countryside, is a work of wide expressive range and emotional impact in which every superfluous note has been eliminated from the overall design. As for the other pieces that appear here, they show a lighter side to the composer, sometimes playful, sometimes melancholy. Unashamedly belonging to the genre of salon music, these works testify to Elgar's versatility as well as to his melodic gift and his ability to turn a seemingly light genre into a vehicle for secret emotion, often charming but always devoid of sentimentality.

SOMM Recordings' new series, "Elgar from the Archives," explores Edward Elgar's music with rare archival recordings, not only from well-known British interpreters but also from lesser-known, yet equally laudable, international conductors and soloists. Volume 2 in the series features historic live performances of Sir Edward Elgar's Violin Concerto in B minor, Op. 61, with Tibor Varga, and the Cello Concerto in E minor, Op. 85, with Andr� Navarra. Lani Spahr-whose work as a master recording engineer of historic reissues has been honoured by Gramophone Magazine-has once again expertly realised the audio restoration of these performances. The Royal Philharmonic Society of London commissioned the Violin Concerto from Elgar in 1909. Composed within a year of his First Symphony, it is one of his longest orchestral compositions and has the reputation of being one of the most difficult in the violin repertoire. He dedicated it to the noted violin master of his day, Fritz Kreisler, who gave the premiere performance in 1910 with Elgar conducting. The Hungarian violinist Tibor Varga (1921-2003) was six years old when he made his first public appearance, becoming one of the most prominent soloists of his generation. The Franz Liszt Academy appointed him an honorary professor-a rare distinction also awarded to Elgar, Emil Gilels, Richard Strauss, and Arturo Toscanini, amongst others. Varga moved to London in 1947, became a citizen, and lived in Britain for nine years. That experience is reflected in his fine, committed performance of Elgar's concerto. This recording, from 1957, is with the Dutch composer and conductor Jan Koetsier and the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra. Following the Great War, Lady Elgar noted that her husband's compositions were different in style and character. His four-movement Cello Concerto, completed in 1919, is barely longer than the first movement of his Violin Concerto, and it is a contemplative, elegiac work with a heartfelt third-movement adagio that is a masterful example of controlled emotion. Yet the concerto ends on a positive note, as the declamatory opening returns in a valedictory form at the end of the finale. The renowned cellist Andr� Navarra (1911-1988) graduated from the Paris Conservatoire at the age of fifteen, and he was later mentored by Pablo Casals. He toured extensively in the United States, Europe, Asia, and the Soviet Union, playing with the great conductors of the era, and he was one of a number of distinguished French cellists who embraced the Elgar concerto. He chose it for his first public performance in Britain at the 1950 Cheltenham Festival with John Barbirolli-with whom he recorded the concerto in 1957. His recording here with German conductor Fritz Rieger and the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra comes from 1956.

January 2026 marks the 75th anniversary of The Elgar Society, which has, since the late 1990s, offered it's invaluable support to SOMM Recordings for new and archival releases of Elgar's works. In celebration, SOMM is releasing this month Vol. 1 of Edward Elgar from the Archives. The release offers "acoustic" recordings of Elgar's Enigma Variations conducted by the composer in 1920 and by Sir Henry Wood in 1924. Also included-abridged, in order to fit onto the original disc sides-is a 1919 recording of Elgar's Violin Sonata featuring the virtuoso, Marjorie Hayward, a fellow of the Royal Academy of Music, and the Australian pianist, Una Mabel Bourne. The London String Quartet, founded in 1908, is featured in an abridged version of Elgar's String Quartet, which they recorded in 1921. Elgar's recording of the Enigma Variations, the Violin Sonata, and the String Quartet are all remastered premiere recordings. Before the microphone made it's appearance in 1926, and revolutionized the technicalities of the recording industry through "electrical" recordings, musical performances were captured by "acoustic" recordings. Jutting from the wall in front of the players was a recording horn that was wound in tape to attenuate the "tinny" sound and reduce vibration. On the other side of the wall was a diaphragm, which transmitted the vibrations captured by the horn to a stylus positioned via a gimbal mechanism over the wax disc to be cut. The recordings on this release demonstrate the skill of the forgotten engineers from that era and show how they learnt by experience. Their skill has been realized for modern ears by the musician and master recording engineer of historic reissues, Lani Spahr,�whose Elgar Remastered [SOMMCD 261-4] was described as a "vivid new transfer" by Gramophone�Magazine when it was named their Historical Choice for Elgar's Symphony No. 1. Elgar and Richard Strauss were the first major composers to take the recording of their music seriously, and the Enigma Variations was Elgar's most substantial piece in his ten years of making recordings. This present performance with the Royal Albert Hall Orchestra was recorded at the HMV Studio, London, in three sessions: February and November 1920 and May 1921. Four years later, Sir Henry Wood conducted the New Queen's Hall Orchestra for Columbia. These two "acoustic" recordings, which bookend the Violin Sonata and the String Quartet on this release, offer a fascinating comparison. Wood's interpretation is marginally quicker overall and, as Lani Spahr points out, "the two orchestras sound to be about the same size but the balances are different and more forward in the Wood. Recording techniques had improved greatly in the four years between the Elgar sessions and when Wood recorded his Elgar set."

Recorded in the recently restored 1875 Victorian Theatre at Alexandra Palace, Crouch End Festival Chorus and David Temple present Elgar's The Kingdom. Joined by London Mozart Players the soloists include Francesca Chiejina, Dame Sarah Connolly Benjamin Hulett and Ashley Riches. Arguably Elgar's least well-known choral work, The Kingdom is a mixture of gentle conversational sections and astonishing dramatic passages, and David Temple believes it is the quality of the orchestral writing that elevates it to justifiably sit alongside Elgar's other notable works. "I am so taken with it It is a gem from the first note to the last, and my desire to share this as widely as possible is reinforced by the present recording One thing that cannot happen in a concert performance is 'repeated listening'. A recording, by contrast, holds an open invitation at the end to return to the beginning! This drip-feed allows the music to be deeply absorbed, and it is this which I believe will enable The Kingdom's true quality to be more widely appreciated" - David Temple.

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.

In January 2026 The Elgar Society marks it's 75th anniversary, and SOMM Recordings celebrates the event with several Elgar releases in gratitude for the society's generous support and encouragement from 1998 to the present day. Light Out of Darkness, Choral Music by Elgar was recorded in February 2025, with the support of The Elgar Society, and continues the inspired journey of the composer's musical development in a series of widely acclaimed releases by SOMM. This present release includes five world-premiere recordings. Light Out of Darkness features the Chapel Choir Of The Royal Hospital Chelsea conducted by their Music Director, the multiple prize-winning conductor and pianist William Vann. This follows their hugely successful first recording of Elgar's choral works for SOMM, The Reeds by Severn Side [SOMMCD 0278]. The featured organist is Callum Knox, an emerging talent from Australia. Edward Elgar (1857-1934) had an unorthodox musical education that turned out to be a fertile training ground for his evolution into one of the most important composers of the Victorian and Edwardian eras. He "learned on the job," so to speak, studying scores and instruction manuals in his father's music shop; assisting his father who played the organ at Worcester's St George's Church; and graduating to organist for St George's in 1885. From these early years come world-premiere recordings of the hymn Praise ye the Lord, 1878, and the first of Elgar's seven settings of Thomas Aquinas's O Salutaris Hostia composed c.1877. Two later versions-from c.1880 (dedicated "To my father - with affection") and 1882-are also included here. This last is another world-premiere recording, as is Elgar's a cappella setting of the Stabat Mater from 1886. In 1888, now aged 31, Elgar composed the dignified Ecce sacerdos magnus (Behold a great priest) for a visit to St. George's by the newly installed Bishop of Birmingham. This release includes three anthems extracted from Elgar's oratorios. Light out of darkness and Light of the World, we know Thy praise are taken from his first oratorio, The Light of Life (Lux Christi). The third is The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, the opening chorus from his penultimate oratorio, The Apostles. Elgar's part songs, or "choral songs" as he later preferred to call them, contain some of his greatest music. Amongst the six included here are Byron's Deep in my soul from The Corsair; O wild West Wind! Inspired by Shelley's Ode to the West Wind; and Go, Song of Mine after the Italian 13th century poet, Guido Cavalcanti, translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The programme closes with Elgar's rousing 1902 arrangement of God Save the King, heard here in the version for organ accompaniment.

SOMM Recordings is thrilled to collaborate once again with the Tessa Uys and Ben Schoeman piano duo following their highly praised six-volume recording of the nine symphonies by Beethoven arranged for piano duet by Xaver Scharwenka-about which International Piano says, "These readings afford unmitigated pleasure... The articulation and voicing of the players persuades us into thinking we're in the middle of an unleashed virtuoso orchestra." Now, these award-winning South African-born artists present music for two pianos and piano duet from their adopted country, highlighting works by Gustav Holst and Edward Elgar. In the early 1910s, Holst became interested in astrology, and he conceived the idea of a suite for orchestra based on the solar system's individual planets. Originally, he composed�The Planets on the piano, using the instrument in his newly-built, sound-proofed room in the music wing at St Paul's Girls School as well as the piano at his home in Thaxted. This version for four hands, two pianos was scored by two of his colleagues at St Paul's, Vally Lasker and Nora Day, who acted as amanuenses, because Holst suffered intermittently from painful neuritis in his right hand. Following the resounding success of the orchestrated version of The Planets, the original piano duet score was overlooked, though it was eventually published separately in 1949-51. In 1979, Holst's daughter, Imogen, reissued the complete two-piano arrangement in one volume, and Tessa Uys and Ben Schoeman perform this version here. Elgar's renown was such that, at the height of his fame, several established musicians were commissioned by publishers to make piano transcriptions of his orchestral music. This was no mean feat, given that Elgar's scores are scrupulously marked as to how he wanted every phrase-sometimes even every bar or note within that phrase-to be played. It was the composer, arranger, and conductor, Otto Singer II, who made the transcription for piano four-hands of Elgar's 1905 Introduction and Allegro, scored originally for solo string quartet and string orchestra. Singer's insight and skill are evident in techniques like transferring string double-stopping to spread keyboard chords, and his piano four-hands version is admirably true to Elgar's evolving contrapuntal and harmonic ideas. In Victorian England, the marriage of a tradesman's son to the daughter of a Major-General in the British Army, who was eight years his senior, might not have appeared a perfect match. Yet, the marriage of Edward Elgar and Caroline Alice Roberts turned out to be a love-match. In 1888, as a wedding present, Edward presented to Carice, as he called her, Salut d'Amour. This enduring melody has inspired numerous arrangements for widely varying instrumental combinations, including this one for piano duet.

The newest release from SOMM Recordings is an unusual but exciting pairing of two string quartets by British and French contemporaries Sir Edward Elgar (1857-1934) and Gabriel Faure (1845-1924). Also included is a collection of shorter gems transcribed for string quartet by the British composer, arranger, and pianist Iain Farrington. These comprise Elgar's Carissima (originally composed for small orchestra) and selections from Faure's Piano Preludes: Nos. 4, 8, and 9, this last described by Aaron Copland as being "so absolutely simple that we can never hope to understand how it can contain such great emotional power." This recording features the Eusebius Quartet, formed in 2016 out of a passion for the extraordinary music written for this instrumentation, and praised as "excellent" by The Sunday Times. Their debut CD for SOMM of the Korngold Piano Quintet & Quartet (SOMMCD 0642) received critical acclaim: "Wit and clarity abound in the Quartet's Viennese-sounding performances, " The Strad; "The musicians seem to feel the music just as it is, complex on the surface, but direct and straight from the heart, " BBC Music Magazine. Elgar and Faure met once at the time of the London premiere of Elgar's First Symphony in 1908. Although Faure spoke no English and Elgar's French wasn't exactly conversational, it's fascinating to compare the musical language of their two quartets, both in the key of E minor, and written late in the composers' lives. Edward Elgar was a more than competent violinist, and he made several attempts throughout his career to write a string quartet. Finally, ill and depressed by war-time London in 1918, he completed his String Quartet, Op. 83. It is cast in three movements, the outer Allegro movements bookending one marked Piacevole (poco andante). This slow middle movement, which contains a�quotation�from Elgar's�Chanson de Matin, was a favourite of Lady Elgar, who described it as "captured sunshine." It was played at her funeral in 1920. Gabriel Faure composed his only String Quartet, Op. 121 in 1924, shortly before his death at the age of 79. By this time, he had been totally deaf for some years, and the quartet suggests a mind driven within itself in a way that hints at Beethoven's Late String Quartets. This final work of Faure presents an extraordinary duality, which masks the romantic ideas of his earlier music with what the English composer and writer Robert Matthew-Walker calls "a soft steely twilight that at times appears almost menacing." As with Elgar's quartet, the central Andante movement particularly captures the imagination with it's musical colouration suggesting a world of half-lights.

The Dream of Gerontius by Edward Elgar is a two-part work for voices and orchestra composed in 1900 to text by John Henry Newman. Widely regarded as Elgar's finest choral work, and by some his masterpiece, Gabrieli’s first-class performance, and McCreesh’s superb interpretation demonstrate why their recordings are seen as some of the best in classical music today.

REVIEW:

This strong performance is apparently the first to use historically appropriate instruments. The trombone, just to give the listener an idea, was owned by Elgar. Tenor Nicky Spence, in the lead role, offers a rich, serious performance. McCreesh’s interpretation focuses on the chorus, placing the work in the grand English oratorio tradition.

— AllMusic.com (James Manheim)

“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)

Johannes Moser's acclaimed interpretation of Elgar's profoundly elegiac and lyrical Cello Concerto and of Tchaikovsky's elegant Rococo Variations returns to the market in an affordable stereo edition. The programme also contains Tchaikovsky's Nocturne and Morceau de Concert for Cello and Orchestra, as well as an arrangement of the famous Andante cantabile from his First String Quartet. Performed together with Orchestre de la Suisse Romande under the baton of Andrew Manze, Moser's rendition was praised by Gramophone as "one of the finest we've had in years."

There Is Sweet Music is the idyllic title of the first AVIE release by the eight-voice Proteus Ensemble and their conductor Stephen Shellard, which surveys a selection of relatively rare part-songs by Sir Edward Elgar. Elgar maintained his dedication to composing part-songs throughout his life and imbued each of them with an inimitable character. Like the composer's celebrated "Enigma Variations", his part-songs bear an array of inspirations and dedicatees, including his wife Caroline Alice who penned the poem of the album's closer, "O Happy Eyes", shortly after she and Elgar were married. This early work became a companion to the song "Love," written eight years later and also dedicated to Caroline Alice. Elgar turned to famous poets and peers - Lord Byron for "Deep in my soul", Percy Bysshe Shelley for "O wild West Wind!", and Alfred Lord Tennyson whose poem "The Lotos-Eaters" provides the album's title track. English translations of Russian poems lend themselves to "Death on the Hills", "Love's Tempest" and "Serenade". Elgar frequently found inspiration in Italy, where he composed "Angelus', a song dedicated to his close friend Alice Stuart Wortley whom he called "Windflower" and whose spirit is enshrined in his Violin Concerto. Stephen Shellard's Elgarian epiphany began in 1990 when he joined Dr. Donald Hunt's choir at Worcester Cathedral as an Alto Lay Clerk. Dr. Hunt's inspired and devoted expertise in performances of works by Worcester's most famous musical son cast a life-long spell on Stephen that manifests itself in these beautiful performances with his Proteus Ensemble.

The third volume in the series Elgar from the Archives from SOMM Recordings includes two historic recordings conducted by Sir Adrian Boult: the oratorio The Kingdom, Op. 51 and the ever-popular Variations on an Original Theme 'Enigma,' Op. 36. These variations form an interesting comparison to the two acoustic versions from the well-received Vol 1 in this series [ARIADNE 5046], one conducted by the composer in 1920, the other by Sir Henry Wood in 1924. Again, these recordings are remastered by audio engineer Lani Spahr, whose work on Elgar from the Archives Vol 1 James Jolly, Editor in Chief of Gramophone Magazine, described as "astounding," adding that "thanks to Siva Oke's SOMM label, Spahr has an outlet for his truly revelatory work." Inspired by the remarks of one of his school teachers that the Apostles were poor men, young men, perhaps "no cleverer than some of you here," Elgar conceived the idea of a work depicting the Apostles as ordinary men reacting to extraordinary events. He envisioned a trilogy of oratorios consisting of The Apostles, Op. 49, The Kingdom, and an unrealized work, The Last Judgement. He made initial sketches for The Kingdom as early as 1882, when he was still serving as organist at St George's Church in Worcester. Following an orchestral Prelude, which introduces the main musical themes and sets the mood of the work, the oratorio is in five parts, each played without a break: I.�In the Upper Room; II.�At the Beautiful Gate; III.�Pentecost; IV.�The Sign of Healing; and V.�The Upper Room. The Kingdom is written for four soloists, choir, and large orchestra-featuring, in this recording, Heather Harper, soprano (The Blessed Virgin); Helen Watts, contralto (Mary Magdalene); William Herbert, tenor (St. John); and Gordon Clinton, baritone (St. Peter), with the Croydon Philharmonic Society and BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Adrian Boult. This programme on 29 May, 1957 at the Royal Festival Hall was part of the centenary celebrations for Elgar's birth. Boult admired The Kingdom above all the other major choral works of Elgar, and his complete understanding of and identification with the work is shown in his expert pacing and observation of dynamics. On 29th February, 1940, about ten weeks before Nazi forces invaded The Netherlands, Boult conducted the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra in a concert broadcast from Hilversum by the Dutch public broadcasting association. The program concluded with Elgar's Enigma Variations, the work that helped to establish Elgar's growing reputation internationally. In a programme note, Elgar wrote, "This work, commenced in a spirit of humour & continued in deep seriousness, contains sketches of the composer's friends."�This Dutch performance is one of Boult's finest interpretations of the work, and it has more than stood the test of it's 86 years.

Kyung Wha Chung - Beau Soir (Faur�, Franck, Debussy, Elgar, works for violin & piano) The centrepiece of this French-themed recital by Kyung Wha Chung and Kevin Kenner is the splendid violin sonata by C�sar Franck. It is a work long associated with Chung, described by the Financial Times as "one of the greatest violinists of the last half-century". Newer to Chung's repertoire is Faur�'s Sonata No 1. As she told Strings magazine, each of the works constitutes "a whole portrait of life itself," and she drew a comparison with Monet's paintings: "The reflection of light has endless possibility. The same thing applies to the texture and the sound when you're playing. There are millions of sounds."

The Catalan cellist Pablo Casals (1876-1973) was first to bring to wider notice the works that open this set, J.S. Bach's solo cello suites. Thereafter we hear his celebrated partnership with Horszowski in Beethoven and the groundbreaking piano trio formed with Thibaud and Cortot in Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann and Mendelssohn. From the symphonic repertoire come the concertos by Dvořák (with George Szell) and Elgar (Adrian Boult). Finally, an enchanting disc of encores and - with Casals's own street-band or cobla - seven examples of the sardana, the national dance of the great artist's beloved homeland.

Daniel Barenboim and Decca Classics continue their acclaimed Elgar series, recording Sea Pictures again after four decades and paired with the symphonic poem Falstaff. Recorded live in the winter of 2019, the album features the Staatskapelle Berlin and mezzo Elina Garanca in her first recording of Sea Pictures.

Classical Music

a deeply felt, thoughtful and, where needed, highly dramatic interpretation of an indisputable masterpiece. (Gramophone) "orchestral textures were sensuously coloured, and the vast symphonic structure flawlessly paced and handled. The choral singing, thrilling in it's immediacy and clarity, can only be described as electrifying from start to finish" (The Guardian) "For Davis, Elgar is a European composer, and the links to Wagner are clear... Davis is the star: guiding shaping, enhancing the beauty and the flow." (The Times)

This recording of Elgar's 2nd Symphony has garnered lavish praise; Classic FM proclaimed it the most passionate and detailed account with the world-class playing of the LSO. BBC Radio 3 while nominating it the top budget choice, described it as being "Larger than life, but capturing every mood with humanity and tenderness". The Guardian and Sunday Times included it in their list of best releases of 2002 and the Penguin Guide chose to highlight the breathtaking gentleness, glorious brass and remarkable dynamic range.

a blaze from heaven descended on him while he was conducting this extremely good First Symphony. He sets a well-nigh perfect tempo for the march and follows with a really lively, excited allegro. Even better though, the playing captures that elusive vein of fantasy that is Elgar... moments of magic explain why Elgar wraps himself round our hearts... are all here in the beautifully balanced recording. Marriner knows where he is going and the final pages are superb. (Gramophone)