Recordings of Elgar’s concerto have come thick and fast recently.
This one can more than hold its own in company as distinguished
as Thomas
Zehetmair and Nicolaj
Znaider. The first thing that strikes you is the beauty
of the recorded sound: taped in the superb acoustic of Glasgow’s
Royal Concert Hall, the Chandos engineers have done a marvellous
job of capturing a lovely bloom around the sound, allowing it
to breathe and flow so that the nobility innate in so much of
Elgar’s music is all the more apparent. You need only listen
to the breadth of phrasing apparent in the opening minute of
the work to appreciate their achievement. It works particularly
well for the pastoral beauty of the slow movement which sounds,
perhaps ironically in the light of the performers and the location,
quintessentially “English”.
The orchestral tone itself is gorgeous throughout, grand and
sweeping in the main theme of the first movement, yearning and
subtle in the “Windflower” themes without losing any of the
scale. It helps to have an Elgarian of Andrew Davis’s stature
piloting the ship. He is alive to every nuance, shaping every
phrase with the authority that comes from a world of experience
in this music. He is especially open to the ebb and flow that
keeps the first movement going, varying the pace with certainty
every time the composer requires it. A gentle haze settles over
the slow movement, something I found absolutely gorgeous, but
the finale has a real crack to its pace, sounding headlong and
unharnessed.
Tasmin Little herself is outstanding throughout. Her technique
is rock-solid, tossing off the runs, double-stops and trills
as if she were taking a walk in the park. Her command of the
fiendish finale is particularly impressive, as is the way she
listens to the orchestra so that she is in constant communication
with her colleagues, never above them. She is always innately
musical, never showy for its own sake, and there is a beautiful
sense of communion, of summing up and concluding, in the great
cadenza. Incidentally, she worked with harpist Gwawr Owen to
reconstruct the cadenza which Elgar composed for his original
1916 recording of the work. Elgar realised that most of the
cadenza’s accompaniment would be lost in the limited technology
of acoustic recording so he added the harp part to give it extra
body, but the part was then lost, so it’s especially interesting
to have it included here as a bonus track. It wouldn’t need
this to make this performance self-recommending, though. Little
and Davis take their place among contemporary recordings by
the likes of Znaider and Zehetmair, and I don’t think it’s going
too far to say that Little is also worthy to look Kennedy and
Bean in the eye without fear.
The Crown of India interlude is serene and reflective,
blessed again by Little’s gorgeous violin playing. Polonia
was written for a concert in aid of Polish victims of the Great
War and contains a collection of stirring melodies by Polish
composers (including Paderewski and Chopin) as well as a typically
expansive Elgar theme that tugs at the patriotic heartstrings.
It’s unashamedly big-boned and it’s very well played, making
it an excellent way to finish off a highly successful disc.
Incidentally, the same team will play the concerto in Edinburgh
and Glasgow in February 2012 as part of the RSNO’s concert season.
See the orchestra's website
for details.
Simon Thompson
Other related resources
Review of this recording by Bob
Briggs
Nick Barnard’s interview
with Tasmin Little
Masterwork index: Elgar's
violin concerto
Tasmin Little (violin) 
[74:52] 
