Elgar's Hillside

[Moonfish]

Elgar can also be heard speaking in this brief film, made during the official opening of the Abbey Road Studios on 12 November 1931.  I must confess that this gives me goose bumps, and a lump in my throat:

https://www.youtube.com/v/iDgv5mjR1HE

"Please play this tune as though you've never heard it before."

Thanks for all your recent posts jdfrex! Great resources and the clip of Elgar conducting was indeed a delight.

[Mirror Image]

The Lyrita discs are now on my "list"!  Thanks for the recommendation, MI, as I was unaware about the 1968 recordings.
Barbirolli is around the corner. I am trying to find my elusive EMI box!        It found a special place to hide before I embarked on my Elgar journey!

You're welcome, Moonfish. Please continue to keep us all up-to-date on your Elgar journey.

P.S. That was a funny remark you about your kid saying "Elgar!" as you were playing the Davis Warner recording of the first symphony. Funny stuff. That sounds like me and my dad actually. I was playing some Janacek Sinfonietta one day and he came in my room and said "Got to love Mr. Janacek. Did that man ever compose anything I didn't like?" FYI, Janacek is one of my dad's favorites along with Mahler, Dvorak, Liszt, and Brahms.

[Moonfish]

You're welcome, Moonfish. Please continue to keep us all up-to-date on your Elgar journey.

P.S. That was a funny remark you about your kid saying "Elgar!" as you were playing the Davis Warner recording of the first symphony. Funny stuff. That sounds like me and my dad actually. I was playing some Janacek Sinfonietta one day and he came in my room and said "Got to love Mr. Janacek. Did that man ever compose anything I didn't like?" FYI, Janacek is one of my dad's favorites along with Mahler, Dvorak, Liszt, and Brahms.

Yes, I guess continuous exposure brings recognition. I always mention the composer and the piece. My son perks up his ears while my daughter forgets it. We also play this game when they have to guess the composer and they each have three guesses. It is a blast. I guess they are getting more familiar with Elgar.  They certainly had a fair amount of exposure to TDoG by now!       Pure bliss! I know, I am biased towards TDoG.....

[Moonfish]

It was a part of my 'gateway' as well, Moonfish. It's still a favorite of mine and, you're right, there's something about this symphony that just gets better and better each time I listen to it. There's no question that Elgar put his heart into the music and thought long and hard about what he wanted to say that will add something to an already glorious symphonic canon. I think he achieved his goal without question. It seems like when it came time for him to want to compose his Symphony No. 2 his whole musical universe had changed. The melancholic nature of his music really rears its head in both symphonies, but the 2nd, for me, is frightening to the point that it feels so autobiographical, especially in that Larghetto movement. But Symphony No. 1 has it's own narrative that I find completely palpable and satisfying. Both works are masterstrokes from his pen.

Interesting thoughts MI! You are right - No 1 and No 2 are indeed very different creatures. I agree with your own observation of melancholy. It seems like (so far in my listening) that melancholy and longing clearly are recurrent themes in Elgar's music? In the symphonies, the chamber works, the choral pieces (TDoG, Music Makers, Kingdom)..     Perhaps it is my own imagination and things that I personally "see" in the music since they resonate with my own melancholy. Who knows?  Perhaps I will think about it differently as I listen further?

[Mirror Image]

Yes, I guess continuous exposure brings recognition. I always mention the composer and the piece. My son perks up his ears while my daughter forgets it. We also play this game when they have to guess the composer and they each have three guesses. It is a blast. I guess they are getting more familiar with Elgar.  They certainly had a fair amount of exposure to TDoG by now!       Pure bliss! I know, I am biased towards TDoG.....

That sounds like a fun game. I'd like to play it, too! It's good that you're exposing your kids to this great music. Perhaps, one day, they'll appreciate it as much as we all do here.

[Mirror Image]

Interesting thoughts MI! You are right - No 1 and No 2 are indeed very different creatures. I agree with your own observation of melancholy. It seems like (so far in my listening) that melancholy and longing clearly are recurrent themes in Elgar's music? In the symphonies, the chamber works, the choral pieces (TDoG, Music Makers, Kingdom)..     Perhaps it is my own imagination and things that I personally "see" in the music since they resonate with my own melancholy. Who knows?  Perhaps I will think about it differently as I listen further?

You're certainly right about pointing out that these nostalgic, melancholic narrative themes run throughout almost all of his oeuvre with the exception of the more ceremonial type of works like Pomp & Circumstance Marches and Polonia for example, but we all know the intention behind these works and why they were important in getting Elgar more recognition. I mean even Ravel disliked his Bolero, but I'm sure he didn't dislike the money the work brought him. Anyway, so, yes, these haunting, lyrical themes seem to permeate Elgar's serious music and this is certainly a part of their allure for me as I'm sure everyone on this thread so far is on a similar page.

[71 dB]

I have had a lot of fun diving into Boult's renditions (I know, I know - not everybody likes his performances, but I do... )
Another inexpensive way to get a lot of Elgar exposure!

[asin] B00C68FJ0K[/asin]

I think Boult is brilliant with Op. 49 & Op. 51. If I have understood correctly, some people find Boult restrained, but I don't think that's a bad thing with Elgar, whose music itself is so powerful and expressive.

[Moonfish]

I think Boult is brilliant with Op. 49 & Op. 51. If I have understood correctly, some people find Boult restrained, but I don't think that's a bad thing with Elgar, whose music itself is so powerful and expressive.

You favor Boult in the choral works overall, 71dB?  I suspect that most people encounter either Boult or Barbirolli, which then becomes a base line for comparison. I feel like I am mostly focused in absorbing the music at this point with repeated listening. Elgar's music certainly deserves the hours I put in. A beautiful aural landscape to wander through...

[71 dB]

You favor Boult in the choral works overall, 71dB?

There is less competition in the choral works than in the symphonies. Comparing Elder's and Boult's Op. 49 makes Elder sound somehow "pale" and thin. I don't what it is but Boult makes the music "larger". I need to listen to Elder more, but I was a bit underwhelmed when I heared it. It's not that Elder is bad, not at all. It's just that Boult seems to nail these large choral works by Elgar, more than he does with the symphonies.

[Mirror Image]

There is less competition in the choral works than in the symphonies. Comparing Elder's and Boult's Op. 49 makes Elder sound somehow "pale" and thin. I don't what it is but Boult makes the music "larger". I need to listen to Elder more, but I was a bit underwhelmed when I heared it. It's not that Elder is bad, not at all. It's just that Boult seems to nail these large choral works by Elgar, more than he does with the symphonies.

I'd take Elder any day of the week over Boult. Elder's recordings of the three oratorios: The Dream of Gerontius, The Apostles, and The Kingdom are magnificent!

[Elgarian]

The Spirit of England and King Olaf are so different kind of works that I wouldn't compare them, but King Olaf and Caractacus can be compared with ease and of course Caractacus is better of these two. That said, King Olaf has it's charm to us Elgarians as you said. 

Just to clarify (though it's a minor point): I wasn't comparing the works themselves, but their stature. My point about The Spirit of England is that despite being one of Elgar's greatest works, it's been incomprehensibly neglected for a long time (until recently). I was observing that I doubt if King Olaf, which also is a much neglected work, is likely prove a comparable perception-shifting revelation to many listeners who discover it.

[Elgarian]

What does everyone think of Elgar's Violin Concerto in B minor, Op. 61? For me, it's one of the finest violin concerti in the concert repertoire. It's a longer concerto at about 47 minutes give or take, but I think it contains some of the most marvelous violin and orchestral music I've ever heard. This is one of those concerti that is symphonic in scope like say Shostakovich's Violin Concerto No. 1 for example. The orchestra has as much importance as the solo violin. This isn't a work that is easy to pull off as I have heard two performances that have achieved this feat and they are Kennedy/Handley and Little/A. Davis. Both of these performances take into account that this work is much more than a pyrotechnic display for the violin. There is a story or narrative happening here as Elgar weaves in and out of tender, reflective passages to rousing climaxes. It's certainly a concerto that took some time for me to appreciate, but, when I finally understood it, it seemed like another door had opened for me into Elgar's emotional and spiritual world.

How do you guys feel about it? Am I just talking rubbish as usual?

We had some splendidly intense discussions about the violin concerto in this thread about 4 years ago. You're right that it can take a while to 'sink in' - for me it was perhaps ten years before the penny fully dropped. I do not think that any other piece of music (I speak purely personally here) has ever so much rewarded the study of the background to the composition of it. Looking back to April 2010, I found one of my attempts to explain just why I find it so powerfully affecting, and I doubt I could improve on it now, so I'll resurrect it:

Elgar's violin concerto has haunted me for most of my post-adolescent life, and it took me many years to get to grips with it. I think it's true to say that a little knowledge of certain aspects of Elgar's life makes it more accessible, more poignant, though I wouldn't suggest it was actually necessary. Some may think it's too long, at 45-50 minutes, but the extra length is due almost entirely to the extraordinary cadenza with which he closes the work.

Someone once remarked that one of the signs of Shakespeare's greatness was his ability to 'connect public and private' worlds so successfully, and I think it's possible to say the same thing about much of Elgar's greatest music - most particularly the violin concerto, where there's a whole spectrum of musical discourse ranging from the public, at one end (Elgar's 'nobilmente' is one aspect of it) to the intensely, intimately private (such as the second windflower theme), at the other. One way (I don't say the only way) of looking at the entire concerto might be as an exploration of this connection between the public and the private. There's the face of Elgar the public man - the one that he presents to the world; the one that stands for his country and his time. And there is the inner heart of Elgar; the insecure, deeply troubled, aching, longing individual mind. Because we all have our own equivalents of these components, the violin concerto has the capability of tearing us to pieces once we tune in properly to it.

The key to the heart of the first movement is the recognition of the two 'Windflower' themes (see my avatar). That these themes, different in character but both deeply feminine, had some symbolic significance for Elgar is unquestionable; trying to discover what it is, is another matter. Perhaps it can't be expressed in words. Elgar wrote on the score: 'Herein is enshrined the soul of .....' but he didn't tell us who '.....' is. Lady Alice Stuart Wortley, Elgar's soulmate and muse for many years, is often proposed as the most likely candidates for the 'soul' - Elgar's nickname for her was 'Windflower' - but I don't believe it's so simple. A heart-rending drama is played out, again and again, between the two 'Windflower' themes, initially in the first movement, and later, most devastatingly, in the extraordinary 10-minute cadenza in the final movement. The second movement is exquisitely beautiful, and would alone make the piece a favourite for me, but the reason why I go back to this concerto, time and time again, is this great drama of the two 'windflower' themes.

Whoever or whatever is the 'soul' enshrined here, nowhere is it enshrined more mysteriously than in the cadenza. About 9 minutes into the last movement, Elgar starts to wind things up. We sense that the finale is coming; we get ready for the end. But no. The release we're expecting doesn't happen. The momentum fades. Unexpectedly from the strings there comes the thrumming sound of something like wind - wind in trees, perhaps, or aeolian harps. It's a strange, haunting sound, and against this background the cadenza (it's an accompanied cadenza) begins. For the next 10 minutes or so the violin takes up again the 'windflower' themes that were such a key factor in the first movement, and explores them as if they represent something remembered that's exquisitely painful, yet loved beyond measure. Elgar has some unfinished business to resolve.

In the cadenza the two windflower themes seem to repeatedly lose each other, then find each other (fleetingly), then lose each other again. There are times when the music falters and almost dies, as if all momentum, all reason for continuing, has been lost - as if no resolution is possible. Elgar seems to strip his soul bare in this cadenza, and yet, finally, some kind of reconciliation is achieved. The darkly beautiful struggle is brought to an end; the window on Elgar's soul is closed, within just a few bars; and we're left once more with the public, optimistic face, with a curious feeling of uneasy acceptance of the insecurities to which we've just been made privy. And the concerto comes to an end in a brisk surge of something like optimism.

The power of it lies in the fact that it somehow seems to tap into something archetypal; something deeper than the mere fact that Elgar was in love with anyone in particular. Elgar is exposing normally hidden aspects of his longing for the feminine, expressed through his love-but-not-quite-love for Alice Stuart-Wortley. If you were to put a gun to my head and demand an explanation, I'd say I think the music conveys a kind of celebration of the feminine, as a healing essence, tempered by an awareness of its destructive, painful aspect. Because of the archetypal character of the struggle, we can all find aspects of ourselves in there: the tension between the need to perform publicly in the world, in the face of private turmoil, for instance; or the circular paradox of our perceptions of the feminine aspect as lover and mother (Persephone and Demeter).

Anyone who wants to dig deeper might like to go back to where that discussion began, which I think is about here:
http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,3503.msg409130.html#msg409130

but then it goes on for many pages in which we thrashed out the merits of the various available performances, as well as the more general discussion of the concerto itself. I remember it as huge fun!

[Moonfish]

If it were The Elgar Interpreters' last stand, and the arrows were flying thick and fast, it would be Boult and Barbirolli that I would hope were the last two standing.

Such a wonderful metaphor, Elgarian! 

[Mirror Image]

Thanks for that post, Elgarian. A great read.

[jfdrex]

Elgarian, thank you for sharing those thoughts.  Especially meaningful to me in light of my own long, personal obsession with this concerto.

I hadn't come across the earlier thread you refer to, so I thank you for linking to that as well.

As it happens, I've just today discovered a performance I hadn't known anything about:   Violinist Aldo Ferraresi (1902-1978), a pupil of Ysaye, with the RAI Orchestra, Milan, conducted by Pietro Argento.  From a concert of March 22, 1966:

https://www.youtube.com/v/gxVuCoyaIwE

https://www.youtube.com/v/kFeIxHQ5CIY

[Mirror Image]

Hey, jfdrex, have you heard the Little/A. Davis recording of the Violin Concerto yet? Definitely check it out if you haven't done so already.

[jfdrex]

Hey, jfdrex, have you heard the Little/A. Davis recording of the Violin Concerto yet? Definitely check it out if you haven't done so already.

Yes, MI, I've got that one.   Also the Takezawa/C. Davis and Kyung Wha Chung/Solti recordings that you mentioned yesterday.  (I almost missed your question to me about those yesterday--this thread is moving along at a pretty brisk clip.)  In fact, I think the Takezawa will be the next one I listen to--I bought it some years ago and played it a lot back then, but not lately.

I heard Tasmin Little play it in concert at the RFH about ten years ago, with Hickox conducting the LSO.  Marvelous!.  I also heard Midori play it with Zubin Mehta and the NY Phil at Avery Fisher Hall--a performance that, alas, left much to be desired.

[Mirror Image]

Yes, MI, I've got that one.   Also the Takezawa/C. Davis and Kyung Wha Chung/Solti recordings that you mentioned yesterday.  (I almost missed your question to me about those yesterday--this thread is moving along at a pretty brisk clip.)  In fact, I think the Takezawa will be the next one I listen to--I bought it some years ago and played it a lot back then, but not lately.

I heard Tasmin Little play it in concert at the RFH about ten years ago, with Hickox conducting the LSO.  Marvelous!.  I also heard Midori play it with Zubin Mehta and the NY Phil at Avery Fisher Hall--a performance that, alas, left much to be desired.

Yes, this thread is moving along quite nicely. I'm excited about the influx of enthusiasm for Elgar's music. Please let me know your thoughts on the Takezawa/C. Davis performance. Also, what do you think of Chung/Solti? How would you rate that performance?

By the way, you can call me, John. What is your name?

[Moonfish]

Tonight's Elgar quota:

Elgar: The Dream of Gerontius     Nash/Ripley/Noble/Walker/Huddersfield Choral Society/Liverpool PO/Sargent

The very first recording of TDoG from April 1945.  I am getting a bit addicted to this work by now....   
It is my second listen to this specific Sargent recording and I definitely prefer it to his later one. Nash's voice is wonderful as Gerontius and the performance moves forward with urgency and passion. The war was not yet over in Europe and perhaps some of the spirit of the sorrow and pain of the war effort moved into the performance?  Not in the top tier, but definitely worthwhile. The sound has a little bit lack of resolution, but it is fantastic for being a 1945 recording (really!).

[asin] B000003XKH[/asin]

Walter Essex wrote a great comparative review of TDoG...

[Mirror Image]

My recording of the week or do I mean every week:



Classical listeners who are just getting into Elgar will find that there are many recordings to choose from, but, in my estimate, this Barbirolli disc remains one of the best possible introductions a new listener to Elgar's music can find. One of the selling points for this recording is that both "Sea Pictures" and the "Cello Concerto" display two completely sides to the composer, which will help the listener grasp Elgar's unique sound-world with greater ease than simply trying to plow their way through the two symphonies, which, to someone new to Elgar, can be quite daunting.

The "Cello Concerto" is a highly emotional work, but at it's core it's lyrical and filled with much beauty that it shouldn't be a problem for the listener to understand. The cello playing of Jacqueline du Pre, as noted by every review I've read of this recording, is exemplary. In fact, I read a story where world-renown cellist Mstislav Rostropovich said after he heard du Pre's performance, he immediately took it out of his repertoire. This is du Pre's second performance of the Elgar and, in my opinion, the finer of the two. I never liked Barenboim's conducting that much and feel he's out-of-place in Elgar's music. Barbirolli, on the other hand, is in-tune with Elgar and the emotional range this work needs to be successful in a performance. Barbirolli is no stranger to Elgar, in fact, he has recorded almost all of the orchestral works for EMI ([[ASIN:B004MSRD4C British Composers: Sir John Barbirolli Conducts Elgar]]). Anyway, this is the best "Cello Concerto" performance I've heard and while other performances that have come to fore lately (i. e. Heinrich Schiff/Elder, Watkins/A. Davis) demonstrate admirable virtuosity, they still don't erase my mind of du Pre's performance.

The other main work here is "Sea Pictures" the only song-cycle Elgar wrote and it has this hazy, Impressionistic feel throughout. Critics and listeners continue to talk about Janet Baker's performance and it's hard to disagree with their continued praise. This is the best performance of "Sea Pictures" on record. There have been many other good ones (Greevy/Handley, Connolly/Wright, Palmer/Hickox), but no other vocalist has touched Baker yet. It also helps when you have sympathetic accompaniment from Barbirolli and the London Symphony Orchestra. I never heard "Where Corals Lie" have so much weight. The depth of feeling throughout the work is gorgeous and will leave you wanting more.

There are many ways to obtain this recording. It's been reissued many, many times, but probably one of the best ways to acquire it is through Barbirolli's box set which I linked above. He was master in this music and in many respects all of his performances remain unchallenged.

Highly recommended.

[My own review taken from Amazon]