MAKING THE CASE FOR ELGAR---He was, after
all, the first composer to take the phonograph seriously.
by BERNARD JACOBSON.
HAILED though he was by Richard Strauss in 1902 as "the first English progressivist" and by the conductor Hans Richter at a London rehearsal six years later as "the greatest modern composer--and not only in this country," Edward Elgar could never claim that his reputation was quick to ripen outside his native land. The astonishing instant vogue represented by a hundred performances, around the world, of his First Symphony within just over a year of its premiere couldn't, and didn't, last.
Certainly there was an audience for Elgar in the United States when I worked as a critic in New York and Chicago between 1964 and 1973: in those days, my reviews of Elgar records seemed to provoke a larger and more enthusiastic response from readers than anything else I wrote. But it was probably the very paucity of avail able material that led a devoted and knowledgeable little band of Elgar listeners to seize so eagerly on every new release. The big exception-the Enigma Variations-may not, in a wider sense, have helped. Recognized from the time of its first hearing in 1899 as an orchestral composition worthy to stand with Brahms' St. Anthony Variations, and featured with fair frequency in the programs of even the less adventurous American orchestras, the piece brought with it the risk of turning Elgar into that most misunderstood of figures, a "one-work composer." And misunderstanding was compounded by the only other Elgar pieces that were at all well known, the Pomp and Circumstance marches, for these served only to rein force-misleadingly, as I shall argue the popular image of the composer as a typical Edwardian Colonel Blimp. But in the second half of the 1970's, happily, making "the case for Elgar" as an artist of the highest and most unimpeachable mastery is a much easier task than it would have been as little as five years ago. The territory, in this as in other cases, has been opened up, and with a will, by the phonograph.
---- It is perhaps no more than appropriate that the music of the first composer to take the phonograph seriously should find itself, in this hundredth anniversary year of the invention of the tin-foil phonograph, moving toward a kind of renascence in the recordings catalog. ---
One substantial "new" area of the discography is not really new at all. Elgar was the first composer to take the phonograph seriously, and between 1914 and 1933, anticipating Stravinsky's documentary use of the medium by several decades, he committed large segments of his output to disc in a landmark series of recording sessions.
(The results of this activity have, in the past few years, been transferred in their entirety to LP's, and these are discussed later in this article.) The other main development, equally welcome, has been the interest lately taken in Elgar's music by conductors from outside the English tradition. The Enigma, not By Ilernard Jacobson surprisingly, has been the spearhead, the justly celebrated readings by Monteux and Toscanini being joined in the catalogs since 1972 by versions under the leadership of Ormandy, Mehta, Haitink, Jochum, Solti, and, still to come, Barenboim. But Barenboim and Solti-both now resident in London and most accurately described from the British standpoint as semi-foreigners have also ranged more widely through Elgariana. Solti has concentrated on the two symphonies, and Barenboim, with characteristic thoroughness, has already recorded half a dozen major works and a selection of minor ones.
Pomp and Circumstance
With this expanded and diversified corpus ready to hand-or to ear-it might be thought that Elgar was at last in a position to make his own case. One or two misconceptions, however, still stand in the way of his just appreciation. The most glaring of them concerns, indeed, that deceptive question of "foreign-ness" and "Englishness." Writers of liner notes (though not Elgar's two most indefatigable annotators, Michael Kennedy and Jerrold Northrop Moore) are still prone to label Elgar as a nationalist. It is in this regard that the pompous and circumstantial image, and especially the subsequent fitting of "Land of hope and glory" words to the trio tune of the first P. and C. march, have been most misleading.
Even if we ignore "the note of recessional, the heroic melancholy, which, rather than self-confident assertive ness," Kennedy identifies as the tune's "true character," we ought still to recognize the crucial distinction between a nationalist composer and a composer of nationalist music. Yes, Elgar loved his country, and yes, he encouraged younger English composers to look for sources of inspiration in England's own culture. Yet in musical style he was himself a conscious, systematic follower of continental European methods and an aspirer to European standards, unlike his fifteen-years-younger con temporary Vaughan Williams. It may well be argued that it was Elgar's legitimization of the very idea of an "English composer," through his emulation of those standards, that cleared the path for his successor to write self-pro claimed "national music." Even to say that Elgar "loved his country" is, if it suggests an image of outmoded chauvinism, to wrong him by oversimplification. Both in artistic matters and in the wider politico-social sphere, his views were rarely hide bound; they never fell into the "my country, right or wrong" category. He was, it's true, repelled by the idea of socialism, and Kennedy and others are probably right in tracing his creative decline after 1918 to his oppressive sense that the First World War had destroyed all he valued in the Europe of his day. (As Elgar himself put it in a letter written during the war: "Everything good & nice & clean & fresh & sweet is far away-never to return.") But we must surely write with a rather small "c" the conservatism of a man who, in the 1870's, was conducting, and writing much of his early music for, the band of an insane asylum in his native Worcestershire, and a man who, in 1910, observed during a speech in Aberdeen: " Dusseldorf is not a very beautiful town, but many people go to reside there on account of the music; the town looks upon that orchestra as a valuable asset, and the municipality takes the responsibility of any loss that may arise... The time is coming when all towns must be able to give the people the good music they want." Elgar made it clear on many occasions, too, that when he said "the people" he meant exactly that, and not some social elite with a conventionally inculcated taste for "the arts."
Gerontius
This supposed pillar of the English establishment was, indeed, thoroughly sickened by its artistic aspects. Returning home in 1902 after the triumphant German premiere of The Dream of Gerontius, he told his friend Jaeger, "The horrible musical atmosphere I plunged into at once in this benighted country nearly suffocated me." In particular, the blinkered concentration of critics on what went on in London exasperated him. "Some day," he declared in a letter published in the Musical Times in May 1903, "the Press will awake to the fact, already known abroad and to some few of us in England, that the living centre of music in Great Britain is not London, but somewhere further North." With views so disaffected it's hardly surprising-and indeed it was partly the cause of them-that the unofficial composer laureate of the nation had some of his greatest successes on the European continent and received some of his best performances from foreign musicians. Richter, already quoted, was a devoted champion of Elgar's work. And that German Gerontius performance came less than fifteen months after a disastrous world première at the 1900 Birmingham Festival, an occasion when inadequate preparation under a makeshift chorus-master defeated even Richter's attempt at last minute inspiration. The Dusseldorf performance under Julius Buths disproved, Elgar wrote, "the idea fostered at Birmingham that my work is too difficult. The personnel of the chorus here is largely amateur, and in no way, except in intelligence and the fact that they have a capable conductor, can they (or it) be considered superior to any good English choral society." The role of Gerontius was sung in Dusseldorf by Ludwig Wollner--"We never had a singer in England with so much brain," said Elgar. Yet insularity dies hard, and when Sir Adrian Boult's long-awaited recording of Gerontius came out in England early in 1976 with Nicolai Gedda in the name part, there were mutterings about the choice of a foreign tenor "who couldn't be expect ed etc. etc." Well, Gerontius-both as work and as role-has been lucky in its recordings. But though Richard Lewis and John Barbirolli in their Angel version, Heddle Nash in the 1945 mono set under Malcolm Sargent, and especially Peter Pears and Benjamin Britten on London achieved many memorable touches, and though there are new re leases imminent conducted by Alexander Gibson and Barenboim (with Robert Tear and Placido Domingo as their Geront ii), my own preference is unhesitatingly for both Gedda and Boult. Their two-record album will probably either be issued in the United States by Angel or possibly imported directly by Capitol. Virtually every thing about the set, including the re corded sound, the orchestral playing, the choral singing, and the superb young bass soloist Robert Lloyd, con spires to make it a near-ideal representation of a great Elgar work.
----- Elgar by Nisetzson
How great exactly? "This is the best of me," Elgar himself judged, and certainly Gerontius is an epoch-making, and often profoundly moving, revivification of the English oratorio tradition by the infusion of German sym phonic methods and European chromaticism. For me, much as I love the work, its very success in capturing the somewhat overheated religious fervor of Cardinal Newman's text militates against complete acceptance. Whatever you may think about, that purely personal reaction, Gerontius undoubtedly points to another deep contradiction between the image of Elgar and his reality.
The Apostles
Intense in his identification with the Gerontius story, he is often thought of as an explicitly Christian and Roman Catholic composer. Yet doubt lurked just below the surface of his faith, and in the end his belief turned to ashes. As a man, he refused the rites of the church on his deathbed. As a composer, he left unfinished the imposing trilogy of oratorios designed, in the years after Gerontius, to chronicle the progress of Christianity. The two parts that were completed, The Apostles (1903) and The Kingdom (1906), seem to be tray this diminishing certainty of aim, for they never quite decide whether to concentrate on human drama or on doctrinal exposition. Still, their re wards are ample to justify attention from anyone more than glancingly interested in Elgar. Boult has recorded both works, and his performances, available in the U.S. on Connoisseur Society 2094 (three discs) and 2089 (two discs), respectively, are exemplary. The most impressive solo work comes from the baritones--John Carol Case's gravely mellifluous Beatitudes in The Apostles and John Shirley- Quirk's impassioned St. Peter in The Kingdom.
----- Elgar by Rothenstein
----- Elgar by Kapp
Falstaff
If there is a discrepancy more fundamental even than the contradictions we have explored in Elgar's attitudes to ward nation and toward religion, it is the gulf between the popular picture of him as a sumptuous embodiment of Edwardian confidence and the reality, which was constant, gnawing self doubt. Recent writings about Elgar have laid increasing stress on the conflicts and questionings that underlie his music's glittering facade. That we to day should value him, the product of a massively self-assured age, for his doubts while we admire a composer like Michael Tippett for certainties wrung from an environment of negativism and confusion, teaches us less, per haps, about Elgar than about our own aesthetic hang-ups. But for me, at any rate, the point serves to illuminate just what it is that is great in Elgar's greatest music, which I take to be the two symphonies, the two concertos, and the symphonic study Falstaff. Not one of these five central works concludes in un-shadowed triumph. The Second Symphony and the violin concerto have their moments of delight and grandiloquence, but they end on a Homeric note of poignant regret for past beauty. Falstaff, musical logic reinforced this time by fidelity to the Shakespearian program, fades bleakly away. The cello concerto, written in the aftermath of the war, is sorrowful, or at least nostalgic, almost through-out. Even the final apotheosis of what Elgar called the "great beautiful tune" in the First Symphony, outwardly so proud and splendid, has to contend with monstrous off-beat thrusts that seek to destroy its balance, and victory is gained by a hair's breadth.
Enigma Variations
Thus it would seem to be not just the passionate aspiration to glorious certainty, but the tension between that longing and its ultimate denial that marks the quintessential Elgar. That is why Enigma, as we now know it, is not on my list of the best of Elgar. A great and lovable work it is, but there is a slightly facile quality about the grandiose coda that separates it from the peak of Elgarian perfection. And that is where my phrase "as we know it" comes in, for originally the piece ended quietly, and Elgar tacked on the more "effective" conclusion at the urging of friends.
I would dearly love to hear Enigma in its first form. But since there is apparently no chance of that, we must be content with what we have, and there are several superb performances on record to help us. The best of all, in my own order of preference, are those of Monteux (London STS 15188), Haitink (Philips 6500481), and Colin Davis (Philips 835317). But Barenboim's new recording (to appear on Columbia) prompts me to wonder whether he shares my doubts about the ending, for his conducting minimizes the grandiosity-indeed, it brings to the entire work a fresh directness that is most attractive, if not as comprehensive of the music's facets as are the Monteux, Haitink, and Davis readings. Barenboim's Enigma is coupled in England with a live recording, taken from concerts given with the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1970, of the cello concerto. The soloist is Jacqueline du Pre, here in even more electrifying form than in her earlier studio recording with Barbirolli.
Symphonies
Barenboim is also conductor in a new recording of the violin concerto (Columbia M34517) by Pinchas Zukerman, who matches the young Menuhin (with Elgar conducting, in a five-disc "Images of Elgar" set, EMI RLS 708, sadly now deleted as an import) in beauty of tone and the older Menuhin (with Boult on Angel S-36330) in completeness of understanding. The "Im ages" set included, among other things, Enigma, the two symphonies, Falstaff, and the cello concerto with Beatrice Harrison, and Elgar conduct ed fine performances even though harried occasionally by the time limits of the original 78-rpm sides. Modern re cording technique, however, is particularly important in music like this, and the Falstaff to have if you must have only one is Barenboim's (Columbia M 32599), one of his greatest performances. For the symphonies, Barenboim is magnificent in No. 1 (Columbia M 32807) and a shade less so in No. 2 (M 31997). Boult's earlier recordings, available in the U.S. from the Musical Heritage Society, are orchestrally less polished. Solti's performances, though superb in their way, I find a shade generalized in their romanticism, and Barbirolli's, apart from a wonderfully poised slow movement in No. 1, don't quite match Barenboim or Boult. But a superb new No. 2 by Boult is now on Angel (S-37218), and it will almost certainly be worth waiting for the No. 1 that is likely to follow.
Modern sound counts in Elgar precisely because his orchestration is unsurpassed in its brilliance. He was a self-taught composer-whence per haps that persistent self-doubt-but unlike too many of his compatriots he sought and attained complete technical mastery. As Bernard Shore, principal violist of the BBC Symphony Orchestra for many years, put it in his book Sixteen Symphonies: "In one respect no composer has ever matched Elgar.
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Elgar's Modern Champions: SIR GEORG SOLTI; DANIEL BARENBOIM; COLIN DAVIS
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------- Sir Edward Elgar in his work room during his later years.
None other has fully exploited all the orchestral instruments and at the same time written nothing impossible. In this latter respect Strauss frequently sins, and so did Wagner . . . [but] Elgar was unerring."
Other Forms
This gift, and the sense that the music was conceived fully dressed, rather than being composed in the abstract first and orchestrated later, is no less apparent in Elgar's minor orchestral works. Here, yet again, Barenboim has made a valuable contribution, with the best available versions of the Pomp and Circumstance marches (Columbia M 32936) and of a variety of smaller pieces (M 33584). His Serenade for Strings on the latter disc, however, is outshone by Boult's performance, coupled with an equally successful Introduction and Allegro on Angel S 37029.
As for the three attractive concert overtures, I would pick Colin Davis' studio recording of Cockaigne (coupled with his Enigma), and, antique sound notwithstanding, Elgar himself for Froissart and In the South-these two being among more than two dozen smallish works contained in another absorbing EMI set, "Elgar on Record" (RLS 713, six discs, still available as an import). There is more treasure in "The Elgar Edition" (EWE 1), a seven-disc set enterprisingly assembled by the small English label Pearl (which is distributed in the United States by Qualiton) and containing all of the com poser's acoustic recordings.
In the chamber, instrumental, and vocal spheres, Elgar's music is, by and large, neither better nor worse than other early twentieth-century efforts.
The best recorded representations of it are John McCabe's disc of all the piano works on the new English Prelude label (PRS 2503, which might possibly be come available in the U.S.), a song recital by John Carol Case and Mary Thomas with Daphne Ibbott (Saga 5304, distributed by CMS Records, Inc., 14 Warren Street, New York, N.Y.), a collection of short violin and piano pieces played by John Georgiadis and John Parry on Pearl (SHE 523), and a glorious new performance of the violin sonata by the Weiss Duo on Uni corn (RHS 341, distributed in the U.S. by HNH).
EVEN in these areas, though, Elgar sometimes plumbed greater depths.
The excellent John Ogdon/Allegri Quartet performance of the piano quintet on Angel S 36686 is unfortunately no longer available. But Louis Halsey conducts some rivetingly imaginative part-songs on Argo (ZRG 607), the short choral pieces conducted by Christopher Robinson, on< EMI (CSD 3660) are every bit as impressive as Bruckner's works in the genre, and-to give the busiest young Elgar conductor of the day an appropriate last word, Daniel Barenboim has recorded the touching, truly picturesque Sea Pictures with Yvonne Minton on Columbia. It will shortly be joining the lovely performance by Janet Baker (Barbirolli conducting) on Angel S 36796 in a catalog of available Elgar recordings that has not heretofore been matched for richness, excellence, and variety.
Bernard Jacobson, former Chicago Daily News critic and STEREO REVIEW-contributor, is author of The Music of Johannes Brahms (Assoc. University Presses, 1977).
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Also see:
BEST RECORDINGS of the MONTH (Apr. 1977)