Elgar's Hillside

Started by Mark, September 20, 2007, 02:03:01 AM

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Sergeant Rock

Quote from: kishnevi on May 06, 2010, 05:49:41 PM
Would I be correct in assuming the Gerontius excerpt  is from the Elder/Halle recording of the complete Gerontius,  in which Coote sings the Angel?
(Recording dates for the Gerontius are given as 15-19 July 2008, if that is needed to clinch the deal).

Those are the recording dates given on Elder's Gerontius CD. Whether they are the same takes, I don't know but I assume they are.

Sarge
the phone rings and somebody says,
"hey, they made a movie about
Mahler, you ought to go see it.
he was as f*cked-up as you are."
                               --Charles Bukowski, "Mahler"

Elgarian

Quote from: kishnevi on May 06, 2010, 05:49:41 PM
Would I be correct in assuming the Gerontius excerpt  is from the Elder/Halle recording of the complete Gerontius,  in which Coote sings the Angel?
(Recording dates for the Gerontius are given as 15-19 July 2008, if that is needed to clinch the deal).
Sarge is right - the dates are the same. I haven't compared them directly, but I assume they're the same recordings. The Kingdom prelude seems to be from a much earlier session, recorded 23 March 2005.

71 dB

Quote from: Luke on May 06, 2010, 11:10:42 AM
Just FWIW it's not really composed for a smaller orchestra - apart from the lack of a double bassoon in the later work the orchestras called for are identical. The orchestras of Europe may have been depleted after the war, true, but that fact doesn't find itself reflected in the instrumentarium of the cello concerto.

One could perhaps argue that the intimacy of the cello concerto might mean it doesn't require so many string players - but a) the scores themselves don't tell us this and b) I don't really think it's true anyway - in its relatively few fully-scored passages the cello concerto makes just as big a noise as the violin concerto.

No, the thinness of the cello concerto, if it is to be called that, is above all just superb scoring, Elgar showing that he knew how to hold things back to allow the cello through to the top of the texture. This affects the tone of the work, of course, intensifies that lonely, pensive soundworld which this concerto makes so much its own.

Ok, thanks for the correction. I must have misundertood something I read about this somewhere years ago. Maybe it is the recorded sound of the first version I heard (Kliegel/Naxos) that created my fixation of thin sound? Maybe other version  haven't corrected this in my mind? Don't know...
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Elgarian

Quote from: DavidRoss on May 06, 2010, 03:27:15 PM
I enjoyed the Kang/Leaper recording so much that I just ordered the CD.
One more small step towards insolvency, Dave, but it's a great way to go and I'm proud to have helped you on your way!

abidoful

#784
I always have had  kind of a mixed feelings about Elgar- he seemed little lame though I was familiar with the  CELLO CONCERTO and I loved it when I heard it in played in the movie about Jacqueline DuPre. Then I heard some orchestral songs and they sounded beautiful. :)
Only now I'm really exploring him. I don't know he's symphonies yet, I only listened the VIOLIN CONCERTO yesterday and it seemed very powerful. :o  I hear something similar in him and the american MacDowell; emotional but kind of masculine, not hysterical like Tchaikowsky.

And yes, SALUT' D AMOUR is absolutely charming- as is the 1st POMPOUS MARCH :-*

Maybe such comments like Sibelius's ("Elgar managed to write wonderful music page after page after which he come to introduce something commonplace and trivial") have influenced to my lack of interest..  ::)

71 dB

#785
Quote from: abidoful on May 12, 2010, 06:30:03 AMMaybe such comments like Sibelius's ("Elgar managed to write wonderful music page after page after which he come to introduce something commonplace and trivial") have influenced to my lack of interest..  ::)

Make your own evaluation of Elgar.  ;) 
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Crossfeeders reduce spatial distortion and make the sound more natural
and less tiresome in headphone listening.

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Scarpia

Quote from: abidoful on May 12, 2010, 06:30:03 AMMaybe such comments like Sibelius's ("Elgar managed to write wonderful music page after page after which he come to introduce something commonplace and trivial") have influenced to my lack of interest..  ::)

If you restrict yourself to composers who were never ridiculed by other composers you will listen to nothing.

abidoful

Quote from: Scarpia on May 12, 2010, 12:24:25 PM
If you restrict yourself to composers who were never ridiculed by other composers you will listen to nothing.
True---

abidoful

Quote from: 71 dB on May 12, 2010, 10:48:43 AM
Make your own evaluation of Elgar.  ;)

Thank's,  I really want to- I'm interested!! :)

Elgarian

#789



Elgar's Violin Sonata

Karl mentioned the violin sonata a while back, and we both thought it was high time to talk about it, so here goes. My approach, as ever with Elgar, is to start with the biography because so often the life informs the work to a considerable degree.

Anyone who compares Elgar's music pre-1914, and post-1914, is going to notice an enormous difference. The War knocked the stuffing out of him, and inflicted serious damage on his dreams of nobility, brotherhood, and the chivalric ideal. His music written specifically for the War culminates in 1917 with the completion of one of his greatest and most (incomprehensibly) neglected works: The Spirit of England - effectively Elgar's Requiem for those who died in the war.

Afterwards he sought refuge in a Sussex cottage, 'Brinkwells', in the heart of woodland, accessible only with difficulty, and offering quite a spartan existence. Something about the surrounding woodland inspired him to embark on his series of chamber works: the violin sonata, the piano quintet, the string quartet (and also of course the non-chamber cello concerto). Quite a lot of biographical material relates to the violin sonata. Alice Elgar recorded in her diary that Elgar was beginning to write a very different kind of music: 'wood magic', she called it. We know that quite apart from his love of the woodland, he was haunted by a particular group of rather sinister trees that are said to have influenced the music he was writing. So one thing we might expect from this music is a new kind of Elgarian pastoralism

But wait. In August 1918, Alice Stuart Wortley (the Windflower) came to visit the cottage. After she left he started work on the Sonata. The opening of the first movement is vigorous and (one might say) masculine in character - but then comes an entirely typical Elgarian moment at about 1 minute in, with the introduction of a lovely 'feminine' second theme. I don't want to get absurdly literalist, but to my ears that theme has 'Windflower' written all over it, as vividly as if he'd carved it into the barks of the trees in the wood.

He'd just begun work on the 2nd (slow) movement when he heard that the Windflower had had an accident and broken her leg, and I don't think it's too fanciful to suppose that the change in tone of the second movement that occurs at about 2m30s, where the 'wood magic' gives way to what is surely one of his loveliest, most heart-aching melodies, may be related to that, and to his feelings for the Windflower and all that she represented, remembered here in his mysterious woodland.

Then Billy Reed came to stay, bringing his violin. He recalls:
'the Violin Sonata was well advanced. All the first movement was written, half the second - he finished this ... while I was there - and the opening section of the Finale. We used to play up to the blank page and then he would say, 'And then what?' - and we would go out to explore the wood or fish in the River Arun.'

The importance of that lovely tune from the second movement is emphasised by the fact that the very same theme reappears in the last two minutes of the final movement, bringing a kind of solace (or is it just a diffferent kind of loss and heartbreak?) to the restless, fretful, and sometimes anguished searching of the previous 6 minutes.

So in the background to the sonata we have the Windflower; we have woodland, and Elgar's love of it; we have a group of haunted trees; and we have all these set against a sense of loss and profound sadness resulting from the horrors of the war. I hope it's obvious that I'm not saying the violin sonata was composed according to some sort of programme; not that; rather, that when I listen to it, and find myself feeling that familiar Elgarian sense of longing for something unreachable and feminine, or imagining light dappling through leaves and branches, or feeling strangely haunted by a sense of almost intolerable loss - then none of these things is very surprising.

If I could only have one recording of the violin sonata, then I'd ask for mercy and plead for two. I'd want Hugh Bean's, with David Parkhouse, but that's not a helpful recommendation because all the copies in the world have recently been bought up by GMG members wanting to get his recording of the violin concerto. But no matter. If I could really and truly only have one, then it would be Lydia Mordkovitch with Julian Milford (see picture above). It takes your heart and squeezes it dry, and then wrings it again. The good news is that unlike the Bean, this is still obtainable, here:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Elgar-Sospiri-Music-Violin-Piano/dp/B000005Z6Y/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1273783814&sr=1-1

abidoful

Quote from: Elgarian on May 13, 2010, 12:58:26 PM
Anyone who compares Elgar's music pre-1914, and post-1914, is going to notice an enormous difference. The War knocked the stuffing out of him, and inflicted serious damage on his dreams of nobility, brotherhood, and the chivalric ideal. His music written specifically for the War culminates in 1917 with the completion of one of his greatest and most (incomprehensibly) neglected works: The Spirit of England - effectively Elgar's Requiem for those who died in the war.

Afterwards he sought refuge in a Sussex cottage, 'Brinkwells', in the heart of woodland, accessible only with difficulty, and offering quite a spartan existence. Something about the surrounding woodland inspired him to embark on his series of chamber works: the violin sonata, the piano quintet, the string quartet (and also of course the non-chamber cello concerto). Quite a lot of biographical material relates to the violin sonata. Alice Elgar recorded in her diary that Elgar was beginning to write a very different kind of music: 'wood magic', she called it. We know that quite apart from his love of the woodland, he was haunted by a particular group of rather sinister trees that are said to have influenced the music he was writing. So one thing we might expect from this music is a new kind of Elgarian pastoralism

But wait. In August 1918, Alice Stuart Wortley (the Windflower) came to visit the cottage. After she left he started work on the Sonata. The opening of the first movement is vigorous and (one might say) masculine in character - but then comes an entirely typical Elgarian moment at about 1 minute in, with the introduction of a lovely 'feminine' second theme. I don't want to get absurdly literalist, but to my ears that theme has 'Windflower' written all over it, as vividly as if he'd carved it into the barks of the trees in the wood.

He'd just begun work on the 2nd (slow) movement when he heard that the Windflower had had an accident and broken her leg, and I don't think it's too fanciful to suppose that the change in tone of the second movement that occurs at about 2m30s, where the 'wood magic' gives way to what is surely one of his loveliest, most heart-aching melodies, may be related to that, and to his feelings for the Windflower and all that she represented, remembered here in his mysterious woodland.

Then Billy Reed came to stay, bringing his violin. He recalls:
'the Violin Sonata was well advanced. All the first movement was written, half the second - he finished this ... while I was there - and the opening section of the Finale. We used to play up to the blank page and then he would say, 'And then what?' - and we would go out to explore the wood or fish in the River Arun.'

The importance of that lovely tune from the second movement is emphasised by the fact that the very same theme reappears in the last two minutes of the final movement, bringing a kind of solace (or is it just a diffferent kind of loss and heartbreak?) to the restless, fretful, and sometimes anguished searching of the previous 6 minutes.

So in the background to the sonata we have the Windflower; we have woodland, and Elgar's love of it; we have a group of haunted trees; and we have all these set against a sense of loss and profound sadness resulting from the horrors of the war. I hope it's obvious that I'm not saying the violin sonata was composed according to some sort of programme; not that; rather, that when I listen to it, and find myself feeling that familiar Elgarian sense of longing for something unreachable and feminine, or imagining light dappling through leaves and branches, or feeling strangely haunted by a sense of almost intolerable loss - then none of these things is very surprising.

So very enjoyable reading this- written with an insight :)

Elgarian

#791
I didn't have time yesterday, but thought I'd say more about specific recordings of the violin sonata. I have five altogether, and my feeling is that one wouldn't actually be unhappy with any of them. I should add that much of what I say below takes for granted a lot of what I said above, in #791, and if you skipped that, then much of what I say below won't make sense.

First up is the Nash Ensemble (Marcia Crayford and Ian Brown):



The real test, for me, is how the transitions to (what I think of as) the 'Windflowery' bits are managed in each movement, and this does very well - meltingly well, in fact, with very sensitive responses to the mood shifts. A lovely recording, and well worth having.


Then there's this one, with Marat Bisengaliev and Benjamin Frith:



This seems to be recorded in a more reverberative acoustic, and Bisengaliev's violin has a more wiry tone. When it begins I find myself squirming a bit, because it isn't quite how I expect Elgar to sound; and he doesn't quite (to my ears) get the transition delicate enough when the feminine second theme appears. But in fact as the piece develops and the tone becomes more familiar, this interpretation starts to acquire its own authority - always just a touch more severe, with the soft, melting moments less indulged in. Even so, it's probably my least favourite version, and I feel as if he doesn't understand Elgar quite well enough - but of course that could just be me being a bit stick-in-the-mud. His wiry sound is very effective at conveying what I like to think of as a 'sinister trees' image in the restless and slightly spooky moments towards the end of the final movement, just before the reappearance of the gorgeous second movement theme.


Then there's Simone Lamsma with Yurie Miura:



Lamsma is a young Dutch violinist who won an award which gave her the opportunity to make a recording, and (quite astonishingly) she chose to record a CD entirely made up of Elgar's works. Her approach to the violin sonata isn't totally convincing, on one level: for example, the appearance of the second theme in the first movement is too boldly stated in my view. She does better with the 'Windflowery' mood change in the second movement, but overall, there doesn't seem to be quite the delicacy that I expect, when delicacy is called for. Even so, I'm actually rather fond of this recording. There's a youthful freshness about it that to some degree makes up for the missing depth, and she so obviously loves the music she's playing even if expressing the full range of it is sometimes beyond her grasp. Not a first choice, then, but not to be dismissed either.


I must mention Hugh Bean/David Parkhouse, even though it's hard to get hold of:



This was the version I grew up with, and for many years was all I had. I'm past knowing how it relates to the other versions I've mentioned because it's so familiar. Bean understands Elgar - full stop - and if I'd never heard Lydia Mordkovitch this would probably be my top recommendation, with the Nash Ensemble as an equally fine alternative. At the close of the final movement, the way he moves from the 'spooky trees' to the reappearance of the second movement theme, shifting from vague unease to heartbreak in the space of 30 seconds, is simply wonderful.


But when all is said, this is The One, for me:



There isn't a false touch; the range from anxious unease to piercing insight, from masculine assertion to feminine compliance, from moments of hope, to moments of hope dashed - it's all here in this recording. Exquisite playing, with wonderfully sensitive piano. A desert island choice.

Sergeant Rock

#792
Elgarian, thanks for the your insightful posts about the Violin Sonata. I'm listening to, and comparing my two versions today: Bean/Parkhouse and Kennedy/Pettinger.



Even before playing them I noticed a major difference between Kennedy and Bean (and Mordkovitch, too, if the timings are listed accurately at amazon.co.uk): Kennedy is much slower in the second movement, almost two minutes slower. Bean and Mordkovitch's timings for all three movements are nearly identical!

Kennedy         8:00  9:42  9:24
Bean               8:07  8:01  9:11
Mordkovitch    8:06  8:06  8:59

Based on several reviews I read yesterday, I decided to order Hope/Mulligan (Elgar coupled with Walton and Finzi, two works I don't own). Hope supposedly contrasts the first and second themes in the first movement in a very extreme way. Sounds interesting. Despite your persuasive argument in favor of Mordkovitch, I wonder if her performance isn't dissimilar enough to Bean, making it redundant in a modest collection of the Sonata?

Sarge
the phone rings and somebody says,
"hey, they made a movie about
Mahler, you ought to go see it.
he was as f*cked-up as you are."
                               --Charles Bukowski, "Mahler"

Elgarian

#793
Quote from: Sergeant Rock on May 14, 2010, 02:32:49 AM
Despite your persuasive argument in favor of Mordkovitch, I wonder if her performance isn't dissimilar enough to Bean, making it redundant in a modest collection of the Sonata?
What an interesting thing to say. Now, I don't find this (though my collection is a modest one). I feel Mordkovitch reaches a level of nuance and fluidity that Bean doesn't quite manage (much though I love his performance). If Bean offers a 10 Kleenex tissue weep-coefficient in the sad bits, Mordkovitch takes me to 12 or 15. I've never directly compared them in detail, but I'll do so and try to come back with specific examples of the differences that seem important (if I can identify them accurately enough, that is).

karlhenning


Sergeant Rock

Quote from: Elgarian on May 14, 2010, 02:57:09 AM
What an interesting thing to say.

My statement deliberately ended in a question mark--hoping you could answer it. I based it on the nearly identical timings (although I realize that doesn't tell you very much about the individual performance) and the fact they are your favorites, making me think they may be more similar in intent and execution than not. If you have the time to elaborate on the differences, I'd appreciate it.

Sarge
the phone rings and somebody says,
"hey, they made a movie about
Mahler, you ought to go see it.
he was as f*cked-up as you are."
                               --Charles Bukowski, "Mahler"

Lethevich

Another thanks for your post on the violin sonata, Elgarian - I love the way that some small works which might otherwise pass me by without much incident can become so much richer when somebody who has listened closely and can successfully articulate their thoughts is able to write a little guide to the piece as you have done here.
Peanut butter, flour and sugar do not make cookies. They make FIRE.

abidoful

Quote from: Elgarian on May 14, 2010, 01:04:00 AM


I become aware of the Elgar CONCERT ALLEGRO only few days ago and got really interested- I didn't find it on YouTube and for this work alone I would consider this disc. Apart from the chamber works and songs, I believe Elgar didn't write much for piano? Being a pianist myself, I wonder has it been published? It was something like opus 46???

drogulus

 
     The Bean version of the Sonata is the only one I've heard, and from my listening the last couple of days (interspersed with 2 cycles of Nielsen symphonies) I would not feel deprived with just this one.
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Elgarian

Quote from: Sergeant Rock on May 14, 2010, 03:23:22 AM
My statement deliberately ended in a question mark--hoping you could answer it. I based it on the nearly identical timings (although I realize that doesn't tell you very much about the individual performance) and the fact they are your favorites, making me think they may be more similar in intent and execution than not. If you have the time to elaborate on the differences, I'd appreciate it.
Worth pointing out that my two favourite recordings of the violin concerto are like chalk and cheese (Bean and Kang), so it doesn't follow that I'm necessarily going for 'more of the same' (though sometimes, I do!)

OK. Here goes. Bean v Mordkovitch. The first minute of the first movement says it all, in a way. Bean is marvellous, full of attack, almost aggressive. But Mordkovitch sounds completely different. Her tone is different, but I can't find words to fit - it's like comparing fine and coarse sandpaper, perhaps. She makes Bean sound as if he's lacking in finesse, more monodimensional in character. Her attack in the first minute is just as powerful as his, but it's like quicksilver, rising and falling in waves, with faster shifts of tone and pace. I get the impression she's actually playing faster than Bean (and checking the timings, I see that indeed she is, by a second or two when completing that first section. Bean is wonderful, but Mordkovitch makes him seem rather plodding by comparison.

This tendency carries on right through into the introduction of the second theme, where she seems to find nuances that Bean misses. For instance, you know how there's a long sustained high note starting at about 1m43s in Bean, and continuing for about 5 seconds? It's a lovely moment, poised somewhere between happiness and pain. Well, when Mordkovitch plays that, she seems to touch some sort of ethereal realm, where the note begins with exquisite delicacy and then fades with equal tenderness at the end. Her playing reminds me of those drawings by Rossetti of Elizabeth Siddal, where the pencil work rises from the page so delicately that you can't tell where the paper/pencil boundary is.

Again, towards the end of the last movement, Bean gives us what I call the spooky trees feeling starting at about 6m15s, then slides into the reappearance of the lovely 'Windflowerish' melody at 6m55s, and it's so very beautiful and moving; but when Mordkovitch plays that I almost get the impression that she's going to come to a halt at the end of the spooky trees, and maybe this time there'll be no reprieve ... then slowly, faintly, the lovely tune appears, like something forgotten and only now remembered. Again, Bean seems monodimensional by comparison. There's a kind of inevitability about where he's going, whereas Mordkovitch is full of uncertainty. Bean gives us plain speaking - beautiful, deeply felt plain speaking, while Mordkovitch is continually hesitant, trembling on the edge, lower lip quivering.

I don't have the necessary command of technicalities to do better than this I'm afraid, and as I read it through again it all seems like an inadequate description of the differences I'm hearing, but it's the best I can do. The differences seem bigger and more obvious when I'm listening, than they do when I'm reading what I've written!