Listening to the beginning of this record without knowing its contents was an unsettling experience. Repetitive, warmed-over Schumann, clumsily written for the piano—who could have thought such poor stuff worthy of recording? In fact the first piece, Chantant, is the work of the 15-year-old Elgar, which does make rather a difference. The record aims to include all elgar's original piano music, along with some of the more attractive transcriptions, and a certain amount of dross is not just tolerable but frequently instructive as well. It is fascinating, for example, to compare the modest Sonatina of 1889 with the revised version Elgar made for publication more than 40 years later.
Side 1 probably remains of more historical than intrinsic interest—Elgar's adolescence as a composer for the piano extended well into middle age, and in terms of expressive content roughly the reverse applies. But come the turn of the century and we are suddenly in a different world, with the relatively familiar Skizze and the substantial In Smyrna and Concert Allegro, the quirky inventiveness of the latter heard, mercifully, in the revised, truncated version.
These fine pieces are expertly done by Peter Pettinger, who also plays the less significant ones with more than just a sense of duty—he brings a nice lilt to the little Pastourelle of 1881 and much affection to the lovely Dream Children arrangement with its echoes of Deep river. The recording gives the piano a rather distant, reverberant sound-image, and since Pettinger is fairly generous with the pedal, clarity is not always ideal. But full marks to Chandos for accommodating nearly 70 minutes of music without trace of pre- or post-echo and to Peter Pettinger for painstakingly assembling the programme and playing it all so persuasively.'