Dawn Upshaw tours with the ACO after their triple grammy whammy. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Certain conductors have become synonymous with particular composers. One thinks of Beethoven/Klemperer or Mahler/Bernstein. In the case of Elgar, the conductor who most often comes to mind is Sir Adrian Boult. He conducted and recorded Elgar’s music repeatedly over a period of 60 years, although when he first heard The Dream of Gerontius he predicted it wouldn’t last! This box contains all his Elgar recordings for EMI. There are others: Boult famously recorded the symphonies for the small company Lyrita in 1968. But this collection contains practically all Elgar’s orchestral works, many obscure or secondary, usually in multiple performances. The only substantial work missing is the song cycle Sea Pictures, probably because Barbirolli’s EMI recording with Janet Baker swept the board.  Timings vary – Boult’s Enigma Variations runs 26:21 in 1936, 31:03 in 1953. Occasionally he rethinks his approach. The Shakespearean tone-poem Falstaff is mellow and its climaxes more triumphal in a late performance from 1973. In 1950, the piece sounds mercurial, lively and even comic…. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Finnish maestro Sakari Oramo 
is no stranger to the music of Elgar, having been at the helm
 of the City of Birmingham Symphony for ten years, where he played a leading role in the Elgar sesquicentenary celebrations in 2007. He was subsequently awarded the Elgar Medal in 2008 for his efforts as a non-British musician in advancing Elgar’s music. The Second Symphony 
is prefaced with a quote from Shelley: “Rarely, rarely, comest thou Spirit of Delight!” Oramo captures the ebullient mood of the “Spirit of Delight” which permeates the opening, but is also responsive to the darker, more troubled music in the haunting slow movement that emphasises “Rarely, rarely, comest thou”. BIS’s super-audio engineering shows the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic to be a well-oiled machine, the brass responding magnificently to Elgar’s many musical and technical challenges, especially in the opening movement and the brilliant Scherzo. The strings are well disciplined throughout, but could have been encouraged to even greater pathos in the slow movement. Oramo’s speeds are comparable to those set by Sir John Barbirolli in his 1964 recording, but there were occasional moments when I felt that Barbirolli was freer with the music and able to wring greater expressiveness and…

As she prepares for her Australian concerts, the American cellist talks Shostakovich, Elliot Carter and playing Elgar for Daniel Barenboim. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

She’s playing the Elgar Cello Concerto with the husband of the woman who made the greatest-ever recording of it; she’s already won a “Genius” award from the MacArthur Foundation, and she’s got Decca hailing her as its first solo cellist signing in more than three decades. Lots of hype to live up to there, and Alisa Weilerstein seems on a hiding-to-nothing when the inevitable comparisons are made with Jacqueline duPré. What
the conspicuously intelligent American has going for her is a prodigious talent that’s been
recognised ever since she made
her concert debut with Cleveland
Orchestra nearly two decades ago.
That, and a commercial point-of-difference
in programming, with the immortal Elgar coupled implausibly with Elliott Carter’s Cello Concerto, and then the bitter pill’s sugar- coating of Bruch’s Kol Nidrei. But Weilerstein is known for her interest
in contemporary music, and Carter’s Cello Concerto, filled with slap-pizzicato and spiky orchestral explosions, is one of the few works by the American composer’s-composer that has crossed over successfully into the popular concert hall. And strange as it may sound given the beloved warhorse company that it keeps, this boots-and-all recording of it is the highlight of an impressive CD which leaves the brain stimulated but the emotions strangely unengaged. In…

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Insightful, shocking, lurid, masterful: eight examples of Russell’s composer portraits on film. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Most people who want the much-recorded music by Elgar and Co will already have it, and mostly in better performances. Those who only want the contemporary works by Nicolas Maw et al will likely not want Holst’s Planets or the Walton works. Doubtless there is a droll side to packaging the Dream of Gerontius with Three Screaming Popes (surely a CD first!) but I don’t imagine that was the aim. So the collection has to be for the Rattle fan club. Setting aside my usual reservations about the conductor (had he been on the scene in the 1950s he would simply have been one of a large number of excellent conductors), these are all perfectly good performances. In the case of the more contemporary music, better than that. Rattle is excellent in this repertoire, making a case for even the most unrewarding scores. For me, the musical utterances of composers such as Turnage often leave a great deal to be desired. Whereas Thomas Adès’s marvellous Asyla, has altogether more colour and variety. The bag of Elgar is mixed. Falstaff is appropriately brisk. The Enigma is excellent. The Gerontius indulgent; with Janet Baker a shadow of her former self, and Nigel…

The old Kings College recording set the benchmark with impeccable boy solo work. The St John’s boys are in comparable form.