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CD and Other Review

Review: Elgar: Music for Powick Asylum (Innovation Ensemble/Collett)

The English label Somm has done sterling service exploring the lesser-known side of many British composers, not the least of which has been Edward Elgar – in particular early works and overlooked wartime compositions. This CD is about as early as it gets – music composed when he was bandmaster at Worcester’s County Pauper Lunatic Asylum in Powick – appointed at the tender age of 21. The majority of the disc is made up of Polkas, Lancers and Quadrilles, many of which are enigmatically named for ladies of Elgar’s acquaintance (obvious ones like Nelly (the composer’s fiancé and Maud, the local music-seller’s daughter, more mysterious ones like La Brunette and Die Junge Kokette). It’s charming stuff, not exactly a demanding listen, but atmospheric late-Victorian dance music in the Sullivan vein. The majority of the compositions were written for the inmates’ regular Friday night dances – a surprisingly enlightened form of music therapy for the time. In addition to the Powick music there are a few extra gems thrown in, chief of which is a delightful Andante and Allegro for Oboe and String Trio predating Elgar’s asylum years and written for the Worcester glee club and his brother Frank. Not essential listening, then, but…

June 11, 2014
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CD and Other Review

Review: Elgar: Symphony No. 2 (Staatskapelle Berlin/Barenboim)

Daniel Barenboim first recorded the Elgar symphonies back in the 1970s and of course also made ‘the other’ Cello Concerto recording with his wife Jacqueline du Pré. Now he’s returning to them all, the latter with Alisa Weilerstein last year. He’s redoing the symphonies with the Staatskapelle Berlin, the Second this year with the First to follow in 2015. And this Symphony No 2 sounds like urgent business for Barenboim. Forget Sir John Barbirolli weeping in the slow movement, or Sir Adrian Boult with his stiff upper lip and two-metre baton revealing Elgarian profundity. Barenboim’s all bustle-and-busyness at the start, not so much nobilmente as ‘no time to stop, got errands to do’. This is a turbulent Elgar, changing his mind every ten seconds, and with his rhythms and phrases all sounding rather four-square at the outset (and perhaps a little too Elgar-as-Brahms). Then when Elgar says “presto”, Barenboim really puts the foot down, making the third movement a veritable showpiece of technical virtuosity on the orchestra’s part, perhaps at the expense of the unusual but altogether distinctive Elgarian characteristic of nostalgia infusing the quick bits. But eventually it all begins to make sense. He may be an old Elgarian…

May 16, 2014