David Stewart wrote:

>I just bought this along with Froissart and Falstaff.  Amazing!  Surely
>a piece of orchestration that even Mahler would have been proud of!  Don't
>you just love the way your focus is in a constant state of flux between the
>different sections of the orchestra.  Is it Webern who was the master of
>that - switching from timbre to timbre in one melodic line?

And remember that Elgar was completely self-taught.  Never attended a
music college in his life.

>Someone was asking why it is performed so rarely.  Maybe it is extremely
>difficult.  There is just so much going on at once.

I also think he did himself no favours by calling it an Overture.
For years this must have worked against it.  It's too long to be a real
overture.  He should have called it what it really is - a symphonic poem
as good as any written by his friend Richard Strauss.

I heard it "live" just late last year in Birmimgham with the CBSO conducted
by Mark Elder.  They bit the bullet and put it at the end of the programme.

The "Roman Armies" episode always sends shivers down my back.

>I had a listen to Falstaff but I wasn't really paying enough attention for
>it to make much of an impression.  I will have another go soon.

Many years ago, when the Barbirolli recording first appeared, William Mann
wrote the sleeve notes and he included the most detailed guide to the piece
that I have ever seen.  Each episode and sub episode was stop watched timed
to the recording, and this in the days of LPs!  In subsequent issues Mann's
notes had gone.  In these days of CDs that kind of approach would be ideal.
It is an unbelievably complex piece, one that I think is only now beginning
to revaeal its secrets.  Jerrold Northrop Moore gives a pretty detailed
account of it in his biography.

Keep listening to it.  Remember that the work is as much about Elgar as it
is about Falstaff.  The world turns and the old feel out of touch - that's
what Elgar is saying when he wrote this.

>Froissart is brilliant too.

Like all Elgar it fits as a piece in the jigsaw.

>I will get the Violin Conceto next.  Recommendations?

You ought to hear the boy Menhuin with Elgar conducting.  That has just
appeared on EMI's "Great Recordings of the Century" coupled with Elgar
conducting Enigmas.  I also like the old Albert Sammons recording from
around the same time.  My favoutite modern recording is Hugh Bean with
Groves and the RLPO.  Then there is Ida Haendel with Boult, new out of
Testament.  Many like the new Kennedy with Rattle.

Tony Duggan
Staffordshire,
United Kingdom.