This collection is a logical pendant to the reissue of Sir Adrian Boult's late EMI Elgar recordings, for just at the time when Sir Adrian's Indian Summer was starting to blossom, the original Groves LPs appeared, and their issue must surely have had a bearing on the fact that the older conductor did not record the three suites on this disc (though of course there was an earlier mono Boult version of the Nursery Suite).
The loss, I think, is not too grievous, for Sir Charles is a very sure-footed Elgarian rather in the Boult tradition, and there is no item here which is anything other than wholly idiomatic and sympathetically conducted. But at the same time Elgar's richly imaginative, restless spirit is not fully realized: sometimes the beat is too hefty and constant, and the music's mercurial ebb and flow is missing. There is not quite the elegance and wistful charm that there should be in the little Caractacus piece, and the Grania and Diarmid excerpt rather lacks atmosphere and tragic grandeur. The Nursery Suite is given a pleasant, gently affectionate reading, however, and in general there's much to enjoy throughout a very well-filled disc. The RLPO play very well and are given a good, sonorous recording.'