Elgar's Hillside

[Scarpia]

Give me someone like Kennedy who plays like the music MATTERS.

Not Kennedy, who plays it as though he matters, and his favorite football team (according to the lengthy essay which he wrote for the CD release).  I'll take the ice maiden over the preening Kennedy any day of the week.   

[Sergeant Rock]

It's a long time since I last gave Solti/Chung a spin; my memory tells me that I struggled to enjoy the Solti side of that partnership (for the very qualities you describe here), but I'll give it another try.

If you do give it a listen, I suggest turning your bass control down a bit. Especially in the first movement, there is a lot of intrusive thumping from the podium...it sounds like Solti really got into the music 

I'll reply to the rest of your post later, after I've had a chance to mull it over. By the way, the Ehnes/A.Davis CD arrived today. I'll probably listen to it after dinner. Kang has been ordered but JPC has not yet sent it.

Edit: Not two minutes after I posted the above, I received an email from JPC. Kang is on the way 

Sarge

[karlhenning]

Not Kennedy, who plays it as though he matters

Extraordinary remark, which does not align with my experience of his playing, either on disc, or in person.

But do go on; these remarks gauge your part in the current conversation most colorfully.

[Scarpia]

Extraordinary remark, which does not align with my experience of his playing, either on disc, or in person.

But do go on; these remarks gauge your part in the current conversation most colorfully.

Likewise, great sage.   

[karlhenning]

I'm not having a go at Kennedy - please be assured that I'm not; I can listen to Kennedy's versions and enjoy them. Neither am I saying that Bean is 'better', and neither am I claiming that my way of looking at it is the 'right' way.  I'm just struggling to convey what I perceive as the difference, and I don't know how best to explain it except like this.

I didn't think at all you were mudslinging, mon vieux.

This is a story I've told more than once, but perhaps never while you've been taking part, Alan.

At the University of Virginia, there is a concert series arranged not by the University but by a distinct 'impresario organization', with the baldly unimaginative name Tuesday Evening Concert Series (known familiarly as TECS).  My first month at UVa (where I took a Master's degree), I was at the department one Tuesday, and my shoulder was tapped to turn pages for the accompanist at that evening's recital.  So it was that I got to know both the Elgar Violin Sonata, and (not to speak to, of course) Nigel Kennedy, on the same evening.  Fabulous piece (which if anything I like even more than the Concerto, not that I don't like the Concerto a great deal), and a fabulous performance.  The man who played both that Sonata, and the Bartók Solo Sonata, is an artist of the highest calibre, who played that night with a blend of sensitivity and fire which continues to be an example to this clarinetist.

Ask me what I think of anyone who calls Kennedy a "numbskull."  (I haven't heard any musician call him any such thing. Hmmm . . . .)

No, go ahead: ask me.

[karlhenning]

I just want to say thank you for your contributions to this thread which I've been reading with great enjoyment and admiration. My understanding and appreciation of the Elgar VC is much as yours is, I think, only you describe things so much more beautifully and passionately than I ever could. Funnily enough, I also share your admiration and preference for Hugh Bean's recording, which I don't think anyone else has commented on - all this discussion of Kennedy and Hahn etc. obscures what a wonderful recording Bean's is, one which I've not heard 'surpassed'. In a funny old way, I'm not sure this doesn't tell us something about the character of the concerto itself - that it's a piece in which a low-profile, thoughtful but not spectacular player with a special connection to the piece seems (to me) to have an advantage over the more powerful, super-charged names who cover it as one step in their leaps from concerto to concerto (I know, I am being dreadfully unfair!). As a concerto, it seems to me, this piece is much the same - and your description of it, to my mind (apologies if I misread you), emphasizes this, particularly the way you describe it drawing into itself in the cadenza rather than charging excitedly for the double bar as it could so easily have done - the way, that is, that it is self-searching and honest and full of integrity.

The Bean is available, very cheaply, on a twofer, with his reading of the VC and the violin sonata on the first disc, and the Allegri Quartet/Ogdon etc in the string quartet and piano quintet on the other disc. It's self-recommending, really

Though this winds up as thanks to Luke, it is also joining the chorus of his thanks to Alan.

[karlhenning]

Having a dickens of a time trying to track down that Bean two-fer, though.

[Sergeant Rock]

No, go ahead: ask me.

I think Scarpia simply doesn't like football...I mean proper football...and therefore characterizes every hooligan as a numbskull 

Sarge

[Sergeant Rock]

Having a dickens of a time trying to track down that Bean two-fer, though.

Me too...at least a reasonably priced copy.

Sarge

[karlhenning]

Heck, Shostakovich was a football enthusiast.  It's not my thing, but I'm a live-&-let-live kind of guy.

Me too...at least a reasonably priced copy.

Yes, I've found it so far only in the humongo Elgar box.

And I just ain't going there.

[Franco]

There's a used (good) copy on Amazon.com for $4.99.

[karlhenning]

Franco, you de man!

[Sergeant Rock]

There's a used (good) copy on Amazon.com for $4.99.

Now find one for me in Europe 

Sarge

[karlhenning]

Now find one for me in Europe 

Sarge

It was with that consideration that I jumped right on that link without asking you first, Sarge.

[karlhenning]

Can you search at amazon.de [sp?] with the criteria:

Label: Angel
ASIN: B0001ZM8VI

[Sergeant Rock]

Can you search at amazon.de [sp?] with the criteria:

Label: Angel
ASIN: B0001ZM8VI

That doesn't work but "Elgar Bean" does of course. The problem is a new one is 25 Euro ($33), the cheapest used 18 ($24)...just too much for budget CDs. I have the same problem at amazon.uk...but I'll keep looking.

Sarge

[Sergeant Rock]

It was with that consideration that I jumped right on that link without asking you first, Sarge.

I understand...and expected it. I rarely buy from amazon.com anyway because shipping costs are so much.

Sarge

[springrite]

I understand...and expected it. I rarely buy from amazon.com anyway because shipping costs are so much.

Sarge

It sure cost a hill of Beans...

[Franco]

Here's inexpensive new & used copies from Amazon.uk.

The CD finder at your service.

[Luke]

Now find one for me in Europe 

Sarge

well, when I checked amazon uk yesterday there was one for £4 something (but I bought it, even though I already have it - can't hurt to have two, in case of emergencies ) and another at £6 something.