Having had a very good experience with the Naxos Historical re-mastering
of Elgar conducting the Enigma
Variations, I jumped at the chance to listen to what Mark
Obert-Thorn had made of the more or less contemporaneous recordings
of the Symphony No.1 and Falstaff.
I do feel somewhat
privileged to be able to experience the state-of-the-art in
this music, represented by a marvellous
recording on Chandos conducted by Richard Hickox, and the
very earliest of recordings conducted by the composer himself.
For a start these old recordings have brushed up remarkably
well. There is an ongoing gnash of shellac underlying the whole
thing, but a de-clicking module has removed most of the surface
hash without squashing the treble in the music or the dynamic
range in the sound. These are of course elderly mono recordings,
and are a little thin and desiccated in places, but so would
you be after 79 years. I was going to say it’s a bit like listening
to Elgar through a telephone, but that would be unfair. Instrumental
solos and orchestral texture are quite clear, and you can hear
the London Symphony Orchestra playing their socks off from the
deepest basses to the fine filaments of solo violin which rise
above.
The Symphony
No.1 is something of an enigma in this recording. Ian Julier
mentions significant portions of the performance as being “lit
by cool, undeniably beauty rather than honest inner revelation.”
He adds that “It would be interesting to know whether Elgar
would have conducted these passages in the same way twenty years
earlier.” We can of course speculate, and Elgar’s own self-doubts
and changes in attitude later in life no doubt play their role,
but to my mind it is also of importance to bear in mind the
kind of strangeness in which people lived in this period. Things
had changed after World War I, but many things had also retained
the appearance of staying the same. There was an underlying
sense of the decay in the old order which can be sensed in literary
works such as Evelyn Waugh’s A Handful of Dust of 1934,
whose very title derives from even stranger and more modern
stuff such as T.S Eliot’s The Waste Land of 1922. I hear
Elgar dashing through the martial elements early into the second
movement as if they were an embarrassing anachronism rather
than statements of heroic intent. The dead of the Great War
had yet to cast their stain on this music in 1908, and its symbolism
may well have felt at odds with Elgar’s sensitivities thereafter.
The Adagio third
movement is possibly less expansive and involving than one might
expect, but this might be explained by the limitations of a
recording situation such as it would have been in this period,
with short takes and other artificial elements not really comparable
with a live concert. This is still a fine performance and I’m
not looking to make excuses, but neither am I always looking
for deep psychological reasons for Elgar’s reading of his own
music. There are still many elegiac and beautiful moments in
this movement however, and the sense of shape and direction
are as coherent and striking as any recording I know. The final
Allegro drives with a great deal of urgency, but all
of those nooks and corners of noble contrast are all present
and correct. Anyone interested in comparing standards in orchestral
playing then and now would be fascinated to hear how the LSO
deal with this intense and athletic piece. Only one or two exposed
violin passages reveal touches of strain, otherwise intonation
and articulation are highly disciplined and a model for performers
even today. The brass deserves particular mention in this regard,
with plenty of refined colour in the sound, and well balanced
almost entirely throughout.
Falstaff –Symphonic
Study in C minor, Op.68 is well matched in terms of sound,
though with the orchestra initially sounding a little more distant
and less well defined in the new Abbey Road Studio No.1. This
was the inaugural recording at this location, and everyone concerned
seems to have taken to it like ducks to water. I used not to be
such a fan of Elgar’s Falstaff, but the wit in the playing
on this recording has gone some way towards restoring my affections
for this programmatic tour de force. The nice thing about hearing
the work in this eminent and ancient context is that the cinematic
images which spring to mind are also grainy and black-and-white
– a semantic synergy which seems to fit; hand in gauntlet. Again,
the playing is marvellous, and while there are fewer moments of
overt emotional involvement and connection amongst all that ‘rumpty
pumpty’ orchestral barnstorming the gentler sections such as the
Dream Interlude have a touching sensitivity. That bizarre,
cut-off ending has never sounded quite so final: Falstaff really
isn’t coming back after that, not even for a final curtain call.
These are performances
which rank highly in their own right, and Naxos have once again
done us a remarkable service by bringing us Elgar’s own late interpretations
in such refreshingly serviceable sound. These are ‘must have’
recordings for all genuine Elgar fans, and can teach us much about
the man and the times. I’m glad to live in an age of hi-fi, but
am equally fascinated by the view we can have of the past from
this kind of recording – it’s about the closest we’re ever likely
to come to time travel after all.
Dominy Clements
London Symphony
Orchestra/Edward Elgar 
