Elgar's Hillside

[karlhenning]

If so, it will lessen the pang (on my own part) of missing the Bean recording . . . .

(The name is Bean, isn't it? I'm not just reflecting a recent absorption with Rowan Atkinson on DVD? . . .)

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Can I just say - you write extraordinarily well about Elgar, Elgarian (Alan). You must identify as closely with him as I do with the composer you, Blakeanly, dubbed Lagrevah...

[Elgarian]

If so, it will lessen the pang (on my own part) of missing the Bean recording . . . .

(The name is Bean, isn't it? I'm not just reflecting a recent absorption with Rowan Atkinson on DVD? . . .)

Do you mean this, Karl?:



Actually although the legendary Mr Bean is the soloist in the violin concerto, and features on the String Quartet, he doesn't play on the Piano Quintet on this 2CD set. I can't be entirely sure, but I don't think he ever recorded the Quintet. So your pangs of desire-for-the-absent need only be two-thirds of the intensity that you think they are.

I suspect that anyone buying this new recording will be well content.

[Elgarian]

Can I just say - you write extraordinarily well about Elgar, Elgarian (Alan). You must identify as closely with him as I do with the composer you, Blakeanly, dubbed Lagrevah...

Well that's very kind of you to say, though my own view of the matter is that I share a lot of Elgar's psychological hang-ups (which means that his music gets deep under my skin because the empathy is unstoppable) but, alas, not a trace of his musical genius.

With your similar very personal feeling for Lagrevah (O, let Him Fire his Furnaces in the Ancient Alleyways of Albion!), you're probably tuning in to the vibes more than most.

[karlhenning]

Do you mean this, Karl?:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/413Y51QSRRL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

Yes; I am desolate and Beanless.

[Elgarian]

Yes; I am desolate and Beanless.

Well, if God had intended us all to have Beans, he'd have given us runners.

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Well, if God had intended us all to have Beans, he'd have given us runners.

Well that's very kind of you to say, though my own view of the matter is that I share a lot of Elgar's psychological hang-ups (which means that his music gets deep under my skin because the empathy is unstoppable) but, alas, not a trace of his musical genius.

With your similar very personal feeling for Lagrevah (O, let Him Fire his Furnaces in the Ancient Alleyways of Albion!), you're probably tuning in to the vibes more than most.

I am a writer (Dutch), and Brian's style and structures are akin to/have influenced mine. So there is a creative affinity there, apart from something in the man's psyche I respond to at a very deep level...

[karlhenning]

Well, if God had intended us all to have Beans, he'd have given us runners.

This conversation set me searching afresh . . . and I've come up with a used Bean!

[Elgarian]

This conversation set me searching afresh . . . and I've come up with a used Bean!

Well even if you don't share my particularly high esteem for it, you'll be able to say: "Bean there. Done that."

[Mirror Image]

I am a writer (Dutch), and Brian's style and structures are akin to/have influenced mine. So there is a creative affinity there, apart from something in the man's psyche I respond to at a very deep level...

Since I can personally relate to a lot of different kinds of people, I can empathize with many composer's styles, but the ones I feel the strongest affinity for are Koechlin, Bartok, Ravel, Villa-Lobos, and Vaughan Williams. I seem to be connected to their music mentally and emotionally than any other composers.

I do relate to some of Elgar's music particularly the masterful and anguished Cello Concerto, which is one of the finest works written for this instrument I think I've ever heard. Finzi's comes in close, but Elgar's really hits home to me. His two symphonies are also deeply personal for me. I think they reflect two sides of the psyche struggling to get out ahead.

[Elgarian]

I am a writer (Dutch), and Brian's style and structures are akin to/have influenced mine. So there is a creative affinity there, apart from something in the man's psyche I respond to at a very deep level...

That's interesting: the idea that an affinity with a composer of music can affect the writing of an author. I can't make the same claim about my own writing (the influences there are quite different, and non-musical, I think) but Elgar and his music have had a profound effect on the way I perceive and appreciate English landscape. I suppose there's a kind of multiple symbiosis: an innate love of the landscape of my own, interacting with not just Elgar's music, but also with the paintings of Constable, Turner, Palmer, and Paul Nash; Blake's illuminated books; and the poetry of Ted Hughes - and the whole package growing together like a musico-visual-literary tree.

For a long time I developed a kind of internal mental association between Elgar and the English 'mystic-pastoral' school of painting (Blake, Palmer, Nash etc) but felt that it was too personal and perhaps a bit too fanciful to admit to it. Then I discovered that the Elgar scholar Jerrold Northrop Moore made exactly those claims in his book Elgar: Child of Dreams (2006), which made me think maybe the notion wasn't so fanciful after all. It certainly makes a good deal of sense of those odd little comments Elgar used to make when he was conducting: 'Play this like something you might have heard down by the river'. To him, those landscape associations were inherent in the music, so I guess we the listeners are, in a sense, 'authorised' to make them.

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Brian's music is built on the dramatic tension between its constituent elements. He can jump from one idea or block to another, creating an overall momentum. As a writer of fiction this can be reproduced by having several story-lines and characters, and juggling them in the most suspenseful manner. Apart from that, his style is very concise, which finds its correlative on the literary side in syntax. I connect Brian with Hopkins (rhythmically, syntactically), Beowulf, Tolkien. And Brian himself loved Blake and Shelley, and Greek tragedy.

Back to Elgar!

[karlhenning]

Spooky. This conversation must have been tugging at the back of mine mind. Johan, I dreamt you sent me a disc of Elgar.  I woke up in a cold sweat . . . .

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Spooky. This conversation must have been tugging at the back of mine mind. Johan, I dreamt you sent me a disc of Elgar.  I woke up in a cold sweat . . . .

You, poor man! ;-)

[karlhenning]

I was touched by your kindness, really.

[71 dB]

Has anyone else picked up one of these yet?

Wow, I didn't know about this release. I don't follow much Hyperion label as their CDs are so damn expensive (even used ones on marketplaces).

Latest Elgar I bought was The Black Knight + Scenes from the Bavarian Highlands (LSC/LSO/Hickox) on Chandos for 4.48 euros delivered. 

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

I was touched by your kindness, really.

It's funny that your dream-Johan and his kindness are separate from me! Though I strive to be kind in life...

[Luke]

Alan, just to echo Johan's words - I find your writing on Eglar extraordinarily interesting and, as always, you have a way of getting to the nub of the matter. (I've been back from holiday for nearly two weeks but just lurking here since then, as nothing has really compelled me to jump back in - till now). I have an itchy trigger finger over The Spirit of England thanks to your post (been looking through the vocal score at IMSLP and can almost feel the piece now...) and your more recent post about the Piers Lane recording has done the same. But when I searched on amazon just now I found an earlier recording by Lane with the Velilnger Qt. It also includes an apparently late chamber piece called In Moonlight which I've never heard of and which isn't on IMSLP. What's it like? And the disc in general? (it's on amazon for about 2 pounds, so I tihink I will click anyway!)

[Luke]

Yes, I just clicked on it, and also on the version of The Spirit of England you recommended - it was only 1.51 after all!

Interesting that the Lane/Goldner recording seems to be one of a series - I clearly haven't been paying attention, as I haven't seen any of these before:

[asin]B005145X0M[/asin][asin]B001UWOIPU[/asin][asin]B000WE5G6W[/asin]

Very tempted by all of these!

[Guido]

Funny, my experience of Elgar is hardly connected to landscapes at all, certainly not English ones, though after all you've written maybe I'm experiencing it all wrong! It all seems too plush and upholstered to me, the strange mosaic effect of his orchestration and lurching musical ideas, a palimpsest of shifting memories, impressions, neurosies and conflicting sentiments. The moments of repose, the grandeur and nostalgia are certainly very English in feeling, and sometimes evocative of landscapes, but to me seem to be some kind of vision of an ideal landscape, sprawling, and magnificent and mysterious, rather than the low key, small scale beauty and solidity that I associate with the south of England where I'm from. And I always find him too odd a character to take on that mantle of "Britain's national composer", he's too quirky, one of the strangest of all the romantics. I know this all runs counter to what he said about his music, and the biography, but thought I'd share it. Anyway, enjoying your posts and am thinking about him more and more.