Elgar

Elgar was an immensely complicated man. A Catholic at a time when that was a real bar to progress in England, he was the son of a shop-keeper tradesman, which was another major bar to social success, but he kept on with a determination only made firmer because Alice his wife was an even stronger personality. When she died he went into virtual compositional retirement for his remaining thirteen years, and concentrated on making the famous series of pioneering gramophone recordings of his most significant works [as well as a few that have not been performed since all that often! But HMV liked to have novelty out every few minths from the jewel in the crown of their artists' roster], and also taking on such ceremonial positions as Master Of The King's Musick.

It was at this time that he was with Bernard Shaw a leading force in cultural life in Malvern.

In his last eight years he lived in the only house that he actually owned, Marl Bank, on Rainbow Hill in Worcester [demolished in 1968, and now the wonderful area of gardens to the old house surrounds blocks of flats], and yet Elgar was penniless such that without GBS's generous help he would neither have owned a house or had much of a living. He enjoyed the horses, and betting certainly cost him dearly.

He was a prickly individual who could react remarkably ungraciously to a direct compliment, as well as retaining a huge chip on his shoulder about the musical establishment in Britain. He did accept a chance to deliver lectures at Birmingham University before WW 1, but never had a strong or friendly relationship with the Royal School Of Music in London.

However he was right at home working with the orchestras and frequently drew wonderful performances from them, and in those days the rehearsal time available in England was shockingly even shorter than today's crowded schedules allow for.

With friends he was capable of great kindness, and occasionally what appears with hindsight, shocking carelessness as well.

These complex character traits show in music that has so many facets. I think it is a shame that the most famous of his music tends to be the patriotic tub-thumping stuff, beautifully crafted and full of great musical themes though these pieces are, when there is a corpus of much less well known music that expresses with huge depth the emotional range of a man well versed with a struggle for the long period of apprenticeship that he faced before his music was finally accepted as being of real significance in England. Strangely Germany took to his music much more easily, and Richard Strauss proclaimed him the "great new progressive!" At that time the London critics were being very sniffy about music that has remained in the repertoire ever since!

So anyone interested in the bigger picture about one of Britain's greatest composers, might well find this of interest as well as for sure introducing them to a lot of lovely and less well known music!

ATB from George

Now that I have the stimulus, I am digging out the "lesser known Elgar" [in his estimable recordings] from the EMI set of nine CDs [three boxes of three] issued in 1993/4. Those old London players certainly knew how to play!

Jerold Northrop Moore described these old recordings as our "time travel bat radar" links to the musical past! Really Elgar's relationship with the gramophone allowed for the first time the possibility of hearing ... no, actually intently listening to ... the intentions at one precise moment only, of the composer, with respect to his own inspiration and hard work to make it playable. If the value of the whole of the recording industry's existence were to be most starkly demonstrated, this point is most clearly to be found in the recordings of Elgar and Rachmaninov.

ATB from George

Thanks for your input Fredrik, greatly appreciated. Maybe you can catch it on iPlayer. I was also interested by the influence of his various women on his body of work, and how he kept one of them quite well-hidden from the biographers!
I think I'll have to try and find a greatest hits CD

quote:

and how he kept one of them [women] quite well-hidden from the biographers!

... two certainly, and more by inference!

I'll try to catch this myself on the BBC iPlayer!

ATB from George

quote:

Originally posted by Nero: I think I'll have to try and find a greatest hits CD

First Symphony is amazing - get the Naxos with George Hurst [who he? a great unsung Anglo-Russian conductor].

The Violin Concerto is the most Romantic of all the great Violin Concertos - perhaps you should start with the Menuhin record with Elgar conducting from 1932 in Abbey Road, and so well recorded as to sound as fine as anything since except for being mono. But consider also Albert Sammons with Sir Henry Wood conducting the Queen's Hall Orchestra [one of the best in those days] for Columbia in 1929, and the recording by Alfredo Campoli with Sir Adrian Boult for Decca, both of which are priceless.

The Cello Concerto - du Pre with Sir John Barbiroli is the most popular really great performance on records, but consider also Tortelier with Sargent from 1954 [available on Testament], and also Anthoni Pini with Edward van Beinum [on Beulah] as two real alternatives, and my real favourite, Andre Navarra also with Barbiroli [also on Testament].

Second Symphony - Boult from 1944 [on Beulah] is still the first recommendation, but he recorded the work five times and all are serious contenders. The modern choice here is Edward Downes on Naxos, which is as strong as the Boult performances, if slightly less intense, but in good modern recorded quality.

Other works, please just ask. I do know my way round the recorded music of Elgar ...

ATB from George

It was a superb programme: try to see it!

Elgar's two symphonies are wonderful. For recordings, I'd suggest the last recorded thoughts of Adrian Boult and John Barbirolli, both available on EMI Classics. Four CDs in total, all at mid-price, and it's worth having the differing, complementary, interpretations of the two best Elgar conductors ever.

For the Violin Concerto, I love Nigel Kennedy's (earlier) EMI recording with Vernon Handley, plus the recent Nikolaj Znaider Dresden account with Colin Davis on RCA.

I entirely agree with George's suggestion of Andre Navarra's account of the Cello Concerto with Barbirolli.

PS: Boult and Barbirolli were also great conductors of Ralph Vaughan Williams' music, but that's a topic for another day.

Dear Graham,

The older Kennedy recording with Handley is so fine that it is really beyond compare ...

I had forgotten it, as I gave my CD of it away years ago to convince a friend about Elgar! It worked. He got several others for himself to set beside a shelf full of pop music. Great result!

I agree completely about the value of having different readings such as you mention between Barbiroli and Boult! In my time I had all five of the Boult recordings of the Second symphony as well as the lovely recording from Barbiroli on EMI that you mention. That one has a great autumnal warmth that is hard to pin down well in words. Powerful, poignant, possibly a little nostalgic ... glowing and like a sunset as the final chord fades to an almost infinite diminuendo ... an extra-ordinary performance.

ATB from George

quote:

It was a superb programme: try to see it!

+1.

Dear George

Please click here - it is worth a watch

ATB Rotf

The composer of Land of Hope and Glory is often regarded as the quintessential English gentleman, but Edward Elgar's image of hearty nobility was deliberately contrived. In reality, he was the son of a shopkeeper, who was awkward, nervous, self-pitying and often rude, while his marriage to his devoted wife Alice was complicated by romantic entanglements which fired his creative energy. In this revelatory portrait of a musical genius, John Bridcut explores the secret conflicts in Elgar's nature which produced some of Britain's greatest music.

Well that was shattering.

My first exposure to the music of Elgar was on Saturday morinings in January 1971 in the weekly musical appreciation classes listening to his First Symphony, and though I already knew who JS Bach was [having just passed my ninth birthday] I knew straight away that Elgar was speaking to me directly - not in words of course, or even conscious thoughts, but in something so direct and also completely inexpressible in words.

I had been shunted off to boarding school nine months after the most impossible to describe separation between my mother [who died a month ago] and my father who died eleven years ago last Easter. My state of mind was isolated, frightened, I can say it now, I wanted to die - as a nine year old, I wanted it all to end. But here was something that spoke to me - took myself outside me during the music. I think this programme goes some way to explain the way Elgar's music spoke [and still speaks now] mysteriously and humanly to a soul was for a while completely lost in the storm of life.

I hope it comes on DVD, but otherwise I have saved it to my computer. I know that I shall watch it again more than once. Incredible really.

Thanks for the link, to seeing horses being ridden on the Malverns, which I did as a small child with my best friend Susan, and this involved a seven-mile hack both ways. It was an all-day expedition. To seeing the countryside I knew so well for all my life, and could take people to the places in this film, to seeing the inside of the Birthplace Museum, where I actually was honorary curator for two weeks in the summer of 1990 - I took holiday leave - to cover for my friend the then curator of the museum who had to have an operation, to seeing the connections made with Elgar's music, which till now were but my own whimsical connections for me, but to have this so beautifully woven together has been the best video I have seen in many years.

Thanks, thanks.

If anyone is interested I wrote a little about the "Dream Of Gerontius" a few weeks ago here which strangely prefigures some of what is said in the film by Elgarians like J Northrop Moore, and Michael Kennedy in this film [though not previously in their estimable biographies], and who were childhood heroes of mine for writing about this subject. Books designed for adults and devoured by someone not then a teenager ...

George

I am sorry for the more than usually careless spellings above. If it were not for discovering the music of Elgar, I definitely would not be posting here today. This discovery led me to read huge amounts, learn to read musical scores and analyse music, explore the great European repertoire of classical music, to learn the double bass to a high standard, to teach that instrument, to eventually find myself deprived of bass playing by a repetitive strain injury in my left hand, to sell the bass, and buy some Naim gear! So yes Elgar has much to answer for!

But most of all his music opened up a special place where I could be happy away from the usual daily life. A place to find refuge and be entirely easy ...

Really the musical part of my life has been a complete distraction from making a conventional success of it, but perhaps I would have failed far more spectacularly without all the same.

It has given breathing space, and led me to paths that themselves gave me the strength to carry on.

Okay that sounds heavy, so maybe I should just pour a beer and shut up.

ATB from George

No, just go and listen to Barbirolli's unmatched Pye recording of the Enigma Variations. And I suggest a glass of red wine, rather than beer (which makes you fat).

G

Dear Graham,

Good idea about the Enigma Vars. On beer, I hope that it will make me fatter! Skinny b*****d that I am. It probably does not help that I race to the offy on my relique Carlton, rather than motor, of course!

I am downloading the film, so as to watch it without the fearful stutter that is inevitable with the BBC iPlayer with direct streaming on our monumentally useless Broadband connection!

This film touched a nerve with me for sure. Rarely does a television film stimulate like this has.

I was thinking that Bach's music now connects with me as powerfully Elgar's did nearly forty years ago, but Elgar led to Bach and Haydn for me, and that says something I think ...

Best wishes from George

No, George, you should mainline Elgar, by listening to a wonderful recording of the Enigma Variations, rather than concern yourself about any insightful TV programme.

G

Thanks all, and especially George, for your insights. I've ordered a couple of CDs - it seems the Kennedy/Handley recording is reissued a couple of times on Classics for Pleasure and Historic Recordings. I guess the sound quality is is maintained? Not being a classical buff you see, I'm wary of re-issues.
Compared to the simpler rock world, it must be a nightmare keeping up with all the "who played what, conducted by who, and where/when, with what interpretation, etc". Maybe in a couple of hundred years, the same will apply to cover versions of Stairway to Heaven....

Nero, the Kennedy/Handley CD is beautifully recorded, one of EMI's first digital recordings. I can't imagine that they've screwed up the reissue, so listen with confidence.

For a follow up, I recommend that you get John Barbirolli's wonderful recording of string music of Elgar and Vaughan Williams, never out of the catalogue since it was issued almost 50 years ago: catalogue number 0724356726420. I'd paste a copy of the sleeve cover, if I knew how!

As to remembering who recorded what with whom, that's half the pleasure.

Graham

A fascinating insight to the man , thankyou Nero for pointing it out.

quote:

Originally posted by graham55:
Nero, the Kennedy/Handley CD is beautifully recorded, one of EMI's first digital recordings. I can't imagine that they've screwed up the reissue, so listen with confidence.

For a follow up, I recommend that you get John Barbirolli's wonderful recording of string music of Elgar and Vaughan Williams, never out of the catalogue since it was issued almost 50 years ago: catalogue number 0724356726420. I'd paste a copy of the sleeve cover, if I knew how!

As to remembering who recorded what with whom, that's half the pleasure.

Graham

I agree wholeheartedly Graham. This is a brilliant recording:

23:30 Elgar: The Man Behind the Mask (R)
Tonight -- monday 15 nov -- on bbc TV-4

I have just played the first Boult recording of the Second Symphony from 1944 [BBC SO recorded in Bedford], and which was the first after Elgar's own estimable recordings ...

I found in this old Boult recording a tenderness that had not struck me before. As tender as Elgar's own recordings, so that the slight 78 surface interference is completely forgotten. This recording was the first full frequency range recording by EMI but this was an accident! The engineers had neglected to connect the high frequency roll-off circuits in the wax disc recording machine pre-amp! But the result is rather fine! The current Beulah transfer is not as fine as the one EMI issued right at the end of the LP era [or at least when EMI stopped issuing mainstream recordings on LP in the early nineties], and which had a silent surface, and a brilliant fullsome quality to the orchestra on what is an exemplary recording regarding musical balances and weighty power.

I agree with Graham that the late LP recording by Barbirolli [on EMI] is almost beyond compare and far better enjoyed in its CD re-incarnation. Gentler than Boult in the Scherzo and most of the first movement, Sir John certainly brings out the music completely ...

ATB from George