Edward ELGAR (1857-1934)
Violin Concerto in B minor, op.61 (1910) [50:14]
Alternative Cadenza for the Violin Concerto (1910-1916) [6:17]
Interlude from The Crown of India, op.66 (1912) [3:44]
Polonia, op.76 (1915) [14:15]
Tasmin Little (violin)
Royal Scottish National Orchestra/Sir Andrew Davis
rec. 24-26 May 2010, Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow. DDD
CHANDOS CHSA5083 [74:52]
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 www.rsno.org.uk
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
Outstanding throughout.