Elgar's Hillside

[DavidRoss]

[Sergeant Rock]

Is that a water pistol or a sex toy?

Sarge

[eyeresist]

No, I think it's used for, er, after....

[DavidRoss]

Hmmm...are you suggesting it be filled with vinegar?

[Scarpia]

I'm afraid I'm in trouble again.  Listened to the violin concerto through twice (Kennedy/Rattle).  I just don't get it.  Such a beautiful opening, such a haunting theme, such wonderful harmonies, such a wonderful Straussian flourish from the horns.  Then the solo violin enters.  After stating the opening motif, to many notes.  Too, too many notes.  Incessant running up and down the finger board, to what effect?  What is Elgar trying to tell us?  The only message flashing through my brain is, "please make it stop!"  I'm evidently missing something here.

[knight66]

Perhaps you are not 'missing' it, but simply don't like it. I don't want to suggest you sound like.......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCud8H7z7vU

But I don't have the same problems with the piece, sounds fine to me.

Mike

[Scarpia]

Perhaps you are not 'missing' it, but simply don't like it. I don't want to suggest you sound like.......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCud8H7z7vU

But I don't have the same problems with the piece, sounds fine to me.

Mike

Yes, I am quite familiar with the scene.  Elgar is not Mozart.      However, probably I should take your advice and give up on the piece.  Life is too short.

[knight66]

Yes, it was not a dig at you, but your comments brought that scene to mind and I could not then resist the link.

Mike

[71 dB]

I just don't get it.

Sorry about that.

Such a beautiful opening, such a haunting theme, such wonderful harmonies, such a wonderful Straussian flourish from the horns.

No problems getting it so far...

Then the solo violin enters.  After stating the opening motif, to many notes.  Too, too many notes.

What is too many? 16? 27? 165? I don't calculate notes, I simply enjoy the music.

Incessant running up and down the finger board, to what effect?  What is Elgar trying to tell us?

Elgar tells us that life is not optimized. It's full of repetition and redundancy and we better accept it. Struggle is part of life and often things take time.

The only message flashing through my brain is, "please make it stop!"  I'm evidently missing something here.

I feel very differently. I find that part of the work very beautiful, relaxing and comforting. Why would I want that that to stop? I NEED those things.

[DavidRoss]

Thanks for the reminder that it's been too long since I last heard Kennedy/Rattle/CBSO's record of Elgar's VC.  Not too many notes, I think, just the number he required, no more, no less.   

[karlhenning]

There, we've localized your problem, Scarps: Don't calculate notes, simply enjoy the music.

Thanks for the reminder that it's been too long since I last heard Kennedy/Rattle/CBSO's record of Elgar's VC.  Not too many notes, I think, just the number he required, no more, no less.   

Got that one loaded onto the player!

[Scarpia]

There, we've localized your problem, Scarps: Don't calculate notes, simply enjoy the music.

If I was enjoying the music I wouldn't be counting the notes (and there are seven hundred fourteen thousand two hundred sixty seven, by my count). 

Maybe Kennedy's overwrought tone, combined with strident EMI engineering is what's bothering me (the only two recordings I have are his two recordings).  There is a definite finger nails on the chalkboard effect.  Some contrast is needed before dismissing this piece.  The recent recording by the ice maiden is on order.  Maybe the ice-water in the veins approach will work better for me in this piece.

[mc ukrneal]

If I was enjoying the music I wouldn't be counting the notes (and there are seven hundred fourteen thousand two hundred sixty seven, by my count). 

Maybe Kennedy's overwrought tone, combined with strident EMI engineering is what's bothering me (the only two recordings I have are his two recordings).  There is a definite finger nails on the chalkboard effect.  Some contrast is needed before dismissing this piece.  The recent recording by the ice maiden is on order.  Maybe the ice-water in the veins approach will work better for me in this piece.

Kennedy makes me want to poke my eyes out, even in this piece where most people love him. I would try a different approach before deciding you don't like the piece - as it really is wonderful. Maybe come back to it later...

[Elgarian]

I'm afraid I'm in trouble again.  Listened to the violin concerto through twice (Kennedy/Rattle).  I just don't get it.  Such a beautiful opening, such a haunting theme, such wonderful harmonies, such a wonderful Straussian flourish from the horns.  Then the solo violin enters.  After stating the opening motif, to many notes.  Too, too many notes.  Incessant running up and down the finger board, to what effect?  What is Elgar trying to tell us?  The only message flashing through my brain is, "please make it stop!"  I'm evidently missing something here.

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).


Both of the Kennedy versions are generally regarded very highly, and of course he plays it brilliantly; but as far as I'm concerned it needs more than brilliance. This concerto isn't about virtuoso fireworks. I don't think Kennedy really gets to the heart-wrending poignant core of the music. Everything hangs on the bitter-sweet desperate interchange between the windflower themes - that is, on Elgar's yearning for some kind of archetypal feminine presence - and for me, Kennedy doesn't quite get that. I don't say it's the best (I wouldn't know how to judge that), but the version I return to again and again is Hugh Bean's, with Charles Groves and the RLPO.

[karlhenning]

Have you given the Hahn recording a spin yet, Alan?

[Scarpia]

Have you given the Hahn recording a spin yet, Alan?

Yes.  It is the ice maiden I've pinned my hopes on!   

[karlhenning]

Well, I've gone on record as considering the Hahn too girly for the piece . . . so I've wondered what relation that may have to Alan's reading of necessary femininity.

But I think her 'voice' is just a little weak for the piece (at least in that recording).

[DavidRoss]

Hahn?  The Ice Maiden?  Have I crossed into an alternate universe?

[Scarpia]

Hahn?  The Ice Maiden?  Have I crossed into an alternate universe?

An impression formed after hearing her recording of the Bach violin concerti (if I recall correctly).  Sounded like a midi sound file to me.  I could be way off base.

[Lethevich]

A heretical thought, Elgarian, but are you aware of a recording of the concerto which goes with Elgar's first thoughts, without the cadenza?