This desirable bargain
double from CFP restores to availability
recordings dating back to the LP era;
a long-term fixture of the EMI Classics
catalogue. Elgar’s music has been eternally
central to EMI. The company can take
a bow for determining the emergence
of Elgar from the despondent shadowlands
of the 1950s and 1960s. The major chamber
music might seem peripheral yet it lets
the listener into Elgar the widower's
post-war anterior world. The fact that
the Piano Quintet and the solo piano
pieces are played by another psychologically
troubled man, John Ogdon, adds to the
‘draw’ of these performances.
Hugh Bean died earlier
this year (2004) and he features eminently
in Tully Potter's superb liner notes
alongside a handsomely assertive studio
portrait. He is the violinist in the
Concerto and plays as part of the group
he founded in the Sonata.
The Sonata is recorded
and styled in a very forward way so
that neither instrumentalist can be
said to be subservient. That said, most
of the musical interest rests with the
violin, Elgar's own instrument. The
Sonata is at its strongest in the mellifluous
song-making of the Allegro non Troppo
finale which is a little Schumann-inflected.
It develops a fine surging swing in
the hands of Parkhouse and Bean. As
for Bean’s treasurable version of the
Concerto this is on the slowish side,
not sleepy but clearly allowed ‘world
enough and time’ to expand its lyrical
lungs. This version does not have the
drive of my first choices which would
be Heifetz/Sargent or Zukerman/Barenboim.
Bean does not exude charisma in the
way of some soloists. Instead there
is an unburnished integrity, the sort
of feeling for poetry that makes his
Lark Ascending with Boult such
a classic. Something has been made of
Bean's Sammons connection and there
is a common feeling there if
not the derring-do of the Sammons recording
which has more storm-cloud drama than
most. If you want an antidote to Elgarian
‘glitz’ yet avoiding the often edge-dulled
predictability of Menuhin or the prolixity
of Haendel in her distended version
with Boult (Testament) then this is
for you. Sound is downright honest,
not Decca-brilliant but four-square
and clear with a trace of hiss only
to be expected from sessions made on
iron oxide tape thirty-two years ago.
The Quintet: Ogdon
(1937-1989) was an outsize personality
yet he subjugates that to match the
predominantly reticent role assigned
by Elgar. This is thoughtful music and
only flames reluctantly in the finale.
Compared with the Bax Piano Quintet
of five years earlier it is subdued
and its melodic interest slight. However
Elgar's writing in the final pages romps
with a regal energy. In the Quartet
the Piacevole with its comely
and slightly melancholy musing comes
off best of all.
Ogdon's playing of
the little Serenade recognises
that it is salon stuff but the substantial
oddity here is the rather ramshackle
rhapsodic Concert Allegro into
which Ogdon infuses a confident mercurial
energy.
Recommendable recordings
strong on British reserve. The Bean
version of the Concerto impresses by
its integrity if not through high-wire
dazzle.
Rob Barnett
Hugh Bean (violin) 
