Edward Elgar Pomp

Menuhin - as is well known - recorded the Elgar Violin Concerto with the composer conducting. In many respects these recordings of the Symphonies sound as if Elgar was still standing at Menuhin's side. No other recordings come closer to the spirit and style of Elgar's own conducting of these works. But this is not mere imitation. Menhuin was a musician of the very first rank - with a remarkable ear and attention to detail. The phrasing is always beautiful and the rhythm alert and alive. These is nothing pompous about these performances - everything is full of vigour and feeling. Playing and recording are excellent.

Royal PO's performance is outstanding in many ways. Menuhin has deep understanding of Elgar's music and its innermost yearning. Every movement displays his genuine affinity with the inspiration and characterisation of the music. Tempi are perfectly judged throughout, the famous 9th variation Nimrod, for example, is neither too fast nor too slow, achieving maximum grandeur and dramatic effect without losing forward momentum. The fast variations are bursting with energy and verve, the slow variations are played with amazing subtlely and heart warming intimacy. The additional organ in the last variation amplifies the scale of the monumental finale.

This disc not only completes Richard Hickox’s Elgar cycle but also provides a fourth recording of the Third Symphony in Anthony Payne’s ‘elaboration’. Indeed, it collates all three of Payne’s Elgar realisations – including recorded debuts of the 1932 memorial ode for Queen Alexandria and the Pomp and Circumstance March No. 6…in terms of recording, then new disc (with a succinct and informative note by Anthony Burton) is a clear winner, the SACD sound having a depth and spaciousness that does justice to Payne’s Elgarian sound-world.

Sol Gabetta’s first recording of the Elgar Cello Concerto, with the Danish National Symphony, was much admired when it appeared six years ago. This one, taken from a concert in the Baden-Baden Festspielhaus in 2014, is a far glossier affair orchestrally. Simon Rattle’s tendency to overmould the phrasing is sometimes too obvious, but Gabetta’s playing is intense and searching, less introspective than some performances in the Adagio, perhaps, but epic in scale in the outer movements, and always keenly responsive. Those who possess her earlier disc might not think they need to invest in this one, but would then miss Gabetta’s vivid, pulsating account of the Martinů concerto, which went through a quarter of a century of revisions before the definitive 1955 version she plays here, with Krysztof Urbański conducting. She finds real depth and intensity in it, both in the slow movement and in the introspective episode that interrupts the finale’s headlong rush.

The music of Edward Elgar (1857-1934) is as unmissable in the British landscape as the red of the double-decker buses and telephone booths that appear on the cover of our new Indispensable. Of the five steps of "Pomp & Circumstance" (the title is borrowed from a passage from Shakespeare's "Othello"), the first (1901) remains the most famous. In the lively radiance of his introduction as in his trio imbued with pride, gravity and dignity all at the same time, Adrian Boult wears, in 1955, an elegant authority, an absolutely irresistible smirk - and what relief!

Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet, OM, GCVO was an English composer, many of whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are orchestral works including the Enigma Variations, the Pomp and Circumstance Marches, concertos for violin and cello, and two symphonies. He also composed choral works, including The Dream of Gerontius, chamber music and songs. He was appointed Master of the King's Musick in 1924.