Elgar Orchestral Works
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Edward Elgar
Label: Classics
Magazine Review Date: 1/1991
Media Format: Cassette
Media Runtime: 0
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: MCFC187
Tracks:
| Composition | Artist Credit |
|---|---|
| In the South, 'Alassio' |
Edward Elgar, Composer
BBC Philharmonic Orchestra Edward Downes, Conductor Edward Elgar, Composer |
| Froissart |
Edward Elgar, Composer
BBC Philharmonic Orchestra Edward Downes, Conductor Edward Elgar, Composer |
| Variations on an Original Theme, 'Enigma' |
Edward Elgar, Composer
BBC Philharmonic Orchestra Edward Downes, Conductor Edward Elgar, Composer |
Author:
Not long ago I began a review of a recording of the Enigma Variations by asking if there was any need or justification for the number of versions now in the catalogue. I answered myself by saying that there was if the performance was good; and the same question and answer apply to this new Conifer disc, which is doubly welcome because it is a further documentation of the superb artistic partnership between Edward Downes and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra which is soon to terminate after ten years, when he hands over to Yan-Pascal Tortelier.
Their Elgar disc invites obvious comparison with the Philharmonia/Sinopoli CD for DG which I reviewed recently, because two of the three works are the same, the Variations and In the South. Downes adds the concert-overture Froissart, Sinopoli the Serenade. I was very enthusiastic about Sinopoli's In the South and so I am about Downes's. Both are incandescent, but I think Sinopoli gains from the Philharmonia's richer string tone and from his own Italian approach to this picture of Italy. There is nothing to choose where the playing of the great viola solo is concerned and both recordings are vivid and rich, the BBC's Manchester Studio 7 producing a marginally less warm tone.
Where most Elgarians will prefer Downes is in his much more idiomatic and traditional presentation of the Enigma Variations, nearer to a Barbirollian view of the work in tempos and in its embracing of the music's blend of intimacy and grandeur. But I would be the poorer for not having heard Sinopoli's searching interpretation of the ''Romanza'' Variation No. 13, for example. On the whole, though, Downes is to be preferred, and the orchestra plays as well for him as the Philharmonia does for Sinopoli (and did for Barbirolli—available on mid-price EMI), with exquisite woodwind solos and eloquent cello and viola in their important passages. (The Philharmonia violins' playing of the brillante passages in ''Troyte'' is in a class of its own, however.) Every time I hear the scoring of this miraculous piece I am bowled over: it never palls. The performance of the Froissart is excellent, not quite as overwhelming as that of In the South but, then, neither is the work.'
Their Elgar disc invites obvious comparison with the Philharmonia/Sinopoli CD for DG which I reviewed recently, because two of the three works are the same, the Variations and In the South. Downes adds the concert-overture Froissart, Sinopoli the Serenade. I was very enthusiastic about Sinopoli's In the South and so I am about Downes's. Both are incandescent, but I think Sinopoli gains from the Philharmonia's richer string tone and from his own Italian approach to this picture of Italy. There is nothing to choose where the playing of the great viola solo is concerned and both recordings are vivid and rich, the BBC's Manchester Studio 7 producing a marginally less warm tone.
Where most Elgarians will prefer Downes is in his much more idiomatic and traditional presentation of the Enigma Variations, nearer to a Barbirollian view of the work in tempos and in its embracing of the music's blend of intimacy and grandeur. But I would be the poorer for not having heard Sinopoli's searching interpretation of the ''Romanza'' Variation No. 13, for example. On the whole, though, Downes is to be preferred, and the orchestra plays as well for him as the Philharmonia does for Sinopoli (and did for Barbirolli—available on mid-price EMI), with exquisite woodwind solos and eloquent cello and viola in their important passages. (The Philharmonia violins' playing of the brillante passages in ''Troyte'' is in a class of its own, however.) Every time I hear the scoring of this miraculous piece I am bowled over: it never palls. The performance of the Froissart is excellent, not quite as overwhelming as that of In the South but, then, neither is the work.'
Elgar Orchestral Works
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