Elgar's Hillside

[Sergeant Rock]

Thanks to the wonder of the InTeRweB, earlier today I heard the Bean/Groves recording of the sonata & concerto that Alan likes so much.  No complaints, and I thought the sonata the better of the two!

I found the Concerto to be everything Elgarian claimed. Shot right up my list of favorites. Desert island material? Yeah...but for me it still has stiff competition in Chung/Solti...and not only musical competition. Alone on a desert island, man does not live by music alone. Fantasy is important, and Chung's a hell of a lot cuter than Bean 

Sarge

[Elgarian]

Thanks to the wonder of the InTeRweB, earlier today I heard the Bean/Groves recording of the sonata & concerto that Alan likes so much.  No complaints, and I thought the sonata the better of the two!

Do you mean you think the sonata is a better work than the concerto, Dave? Or that Bean plays the sonata better than he does the concerto? I presume the latter (since the two works aren't really comparable)? I'd be hard-pressed to choose between two such levels of excellence, myself, though it's a particularly Bean-like excellence, and not for everyone, I should think.

[Elgarian]

I found the Concerto to be everything Elgarian claimed. Shot right up my list of favorites. Desert island material? Yeah...but for me it still has stiff competition in Chung/Solti...and not only musical competition. Alone on a desert island, man does not live by music alone. Fantasy is important, and Chung's a hell of a lot cuter than Bean 

Yeah - but actually Sarge, you've hit on something important here. The violin concerto, more than any other work, expresses Elgar's deep feeling for the feminine, don't you think? There's that important interplay between the public and the private face of the composer, yes; but within that there's Elgar's peculiarly Elgarian relationship with the feminine. Specifically, at the time he wrote it, there was a particular person to attach this to - Alice Stuart-Wortley, his 'Windflower'; but underlying that extraordinary friendship was something more universal: a kind of Kore/Proserpine/Demeter - maiden/lover/mother - symbolism (though that mythic shorthand isn't a perfect fit), and it haunts the violin concerto more than anywhere else. I think the interplay between the two key Windflower themes is an expression of this.

Now one might argue (maybe fancifully, but maybe not), that only a female soloist might be able to express this properly. Or at least, if not that, she may tend to produce a particularly feminine 'take' on the concerto that might be illuminating. I bought the Chung recording for precisely that reason, and if it's not quite my favourite, that doesn't mean I don't think it's very lovely. I bought Tasmin Little's recent recording for the same reason too. Whether this goes any further than the mere psychology of 'knowing that the fiddler is female', I honestly couldn't say. I don't even really care that much - Elgar surely fantasised in this kind of way, so why shouldn't we?

For the same reason, this is one of my most-played collections:

Having won the Britten International Violin competition, this Dutch fiddler chose to record a collection of Elgar pieces. Elgar would have adored her for doing such a thing; and would have adored her anyway I suspect. And she makes a good shot at them too. And the whole idea of that produces a very pleasant aura that goes a long way towards smoothing out any little roughnesses or weaknesses in the actual performances.

I'd be the first to admit that I make loads of extra-musical associations with Elgar's music; and they all influence how I listen and what I hear. And I don't feel in any way that I oughtn't to do that, because I think he experienced the music himself under the influence of his own private versions of these associations or neuroses.

[Elgarian]

Hate to skip back past all the In The South posts, but I have to say, Elgarian, it's a pleasure to read such thoughtful posts from someone who obviously both knows and loves his subject.  I would always tell people how much I loved Elgar and encourage them to listen to his music, but I'm a mere baby experience-wise when it comes to you.  Keep it coming.

What a generous thing to say. Thank you. But I should say two things in reply:
1. It would hard to stop me from 'keeping it coming'!
2. I confess to loving my subject, but I'd advise any reader of my posts to be sceptical of my knowledge. My understanding of the music is very limited, and my response (admittedly based on reasonably wide reading about the man, and exploring his favourite Malvern countryside) is always very coloured by emotion/neurosis/biographical interest etc. So what spills out here is a very personal view of Elgar that wouldn't suit everyone, and I'm very conscious of its limitations.

[Elgarian]

Alone on a desert island, man does not live by music alone. Fantasy is important, and Chung's a hell of a lot cuter than Bean 

While discussing this theme of female violinists, I should most certainly have mentioned this fabulous recording of the violin sonata by Lydia Mordkovitch:



I could've sworn that I'd written something about this already; but if so I can't find it, and if not, then I'm seriously lacking in my duty to the community. Suffice for now to say that for me, she utterly nails the violin sonata once and for all. This is sheer goosebump juice.

Footnote: just looked it up in an old Penguin Guide: they mark it as a key recording, award it their special rosette, and comment: "Lydia Mordkovitch here transforms the elusive Elgar violin sonata. In rapt and concentrated playing she gives it new mystery, with the subtlest pointing and shading down to the whispered pianissimos." They don't always get it right, those Penguin Guiders, but here they do. Magic.

Extra footnote: Aha! I was right! I had written about this recording already, and here it is (#791 in this very thread). I'm quoting the whole of it, because all the background brings added meaning (for me) to Mordkovitch's interpretation of the piece:

Elgar's Violin Sonata

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


Additional extra footnote: Blimey. I just discovered that I'd already reviewed my whole collection of recordings of the violin sonata. I have no recollection of ever doing that! Here it is, #793 in this thread:
http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,3503.msg413086.html#msg413086

[karlhenning]

Bean landed yesterday. Will listen this morning. Or afternoon, as may be.

[karlhenning]

Bean landed yesterday. Will listen this morning. Or afternoon, as may be.

Listening right now (the Op.82). Man, is this good!

[DavidRoss]

Do you mean you think the sonata is a better work than the concerto, Dave? Or that Bean plays the sonata better than he does the concerto? I presume the latter (since the two works aren't really comparable)? I'd be hard-pressed to choose between two such levels of excellence, myself, though it's a particularly Bean-like excellence, and not for everyone, I should think.

I spoke imprecisely.  I enjoyed hearing the sonata more.  Unfamiliarity with a work that I liked quite a bit doubtless contributed to my pleasure.  But then I dreamed last night that I was living in Berkeley 30 years ago, so everything may be off-kilter today!

[karlhenning]

Listening right now (the Op.82). Man, is this good!

They recorded this on New Year's Day, 1971 . . . do I fancy I can hear that in the espressivo? . . . .

[DavidRoss]

Listening right now (the Op.82). Man, is this good!

Yes, my response as well.

[karlhenning]

Good morning, Dave!

Maybe I've been lucky: all three performances/recordings I've heard of the Sonata have been intensely engaging . . . maybe it's just so seldom prepared a work, that those who do, really mean it.  I've probably mentioned before that my introduction to the piece was, I turned pages for Nigel Kennedy's accompanist when he played a recital in the University of Virginia's Old Cabell Hall.  I'm a little (only a little) annoyed with myself that I've not yet gotten to know the Concerto as well as I know the Sonata . . . but perhaps it's only that the Sonata makes friends more readily.

Really delighted that I followed up on Alan's suggestion, and fetched Mr Bean in . . . .

[Vesteralen]

I shouldn't be much interested in Elgar's juvenilia, but of course, YMMV : )

Well, that may be true for some, but after listening through it twice, I have to say I'm loving this CD.  Through most of it, it's true, I probably hear more of Schubert, Schumann, Dvorak, and even, dare I say it, Stephen Foster, than I hear much that is typically Elgar.  But, it's still quite beautiful music.  And, it shows that the guy had a prodigious talent for melody.  If it's a bit derivative, at least it isn't second-rate derivative.

Here and there, though, I do think I hear snatches of the familiar Elgar - most notably in the Op. 4 (the Simone Lamsma recording, BTW, that Elgarian refers to above) and the Op 7 (in a kind of muddy recording with Marriner and TAOSMITF - well, maybe it's not really that muddy, but coming right after the Lamsma, it seems that way).

As a side note, I really like the 38 minute run-time of this disc I created.  Odd as it may sound, I find most CDs to be too long (though I'd be the last one to ask to pay more for less under normal circumstances).

[karlhenning]

Well, that may be true for some, but after listening through it twice, I have to say I'm loving this CD.

That's cool . . . there are composers in whose uncharacteristic earlier work I take keen interest, an interest which would puzzle many another listener (even a thorough, and even a very musical, listener).

[DavidRoss]

Really delighted that I followed up on Alan's suggestion, and fetched Mr Bean in . . . .

And good morning to you, too, sir!

I'm delighted that I followed up PhysicsDave's suggestion to try mog.  Lots to like there for only $5/mo, not least of which is nearly immediate hearing of almost any work that catches my fancy.  Since the Bean recording is OOP and relatively rare, I might cast about there for another of the sonata to my taste.

[karlhenning]

The other recording I've got is sort of historical interest, Yehudi & Hephzibah Menuhin (a recording whereof, yikes, an Amazon third-partier is hawking a new copy for . . . wait for it . . . $222.90)

[DavidRoss]

The other recording I've got is sort of historical interest, Yehudi & Hephzibah Menuhin (a recording whereof, yikes, an Amazon third-partier is hawking a new copy for . . . wait for it . . . $222.90)

Looks as if the "2" on his keyboard is sticking. 

[karlhenning]

Aye. Shouldn't call the disc anywhere near that essential . . . .

[kishnevi]

The other recording I've got is sort of historical interest, Yehudi & Hephzibah Menuhin (a recording whereof, yikes, an Amazon third-partier is hawking a new copy for . . . wait for it . . . $222.90)

No doubt $222.90 is actually a markdown from $222.99

[TheGSMoeller]

I'm really excited, just ordered....

[asin]B000000AC6[/asin]


...for ultra cheap, as in I basically only paid amazon.com's required MP shipping cost. One of the few Elgar pieces I'm not so familiar with, how does this performance rank among others? I bought this one because the price was right, but I don't see how it could be too bad.

Also, I'm in the market for another recording of Falstaff, I have the Lloyd-Jones/ENP on Naxos and would like to explore this piece further. Suggestions?

Thanks, friends. 

[karlhenning]

Also, I'm in the market for another recording of Falstaff, I have the Lloyd-Jones/ENP on Naxos and would like to explore this piece further. Suggestions?

Mark Elder & the Hallé!