Anne Ozorio posts >Below is a link to a wonderfully provocative article by the conductor >Sakari Oramo on Edward Elgar. It's provocative because he assesses >Elgar in completely fresh terms. Says Oramo, > >http://music.guardian.co.uk/classical/story/0,,2087164,00.html Interesting article, though I'm not sure I agree with all of it. To call Adrian Boult "stoic" and "stodgy" seems way off the mark. (I had the great fortune of meeting the son of Elgar's friend Ivor Atkins, Wulston Atkins, late in his life. Both of us just shook our heads at this characterization of Boult.) I agree with Steve Schwarts that "operatic" does not really describe Barbarolli--even if he was half-Italian. I should add that even if you accept these characterizations, the performances of the young Boult and Barbirolli were quite different than their later, better known recordings from the stereo era. As for Elgar's own recordings, I guess I'm in the minority. I've never cared all that much for most of them (just as I've never liked those of Georg Solti, the nearst I can think of to a modern disciple). From what I have read and heard, Elgar changed his view in different interpretations. I'm not saying he sounded like Boult and Barbarolli in some of them, but they did vary at least from his accoustical recordings and much later electric ones. I've always thought of these recordings as a snapshop of his way with his music at one given time, somewhat shaped by the demands of the 4-minute side of 78s. Perhaps this is unfair, but it is my emotional reaction to them. Beyond that, the problem that Elgar suffers outside England is not limited to Elgar. Aside from Vaughan-Williams--and not entirely aside even then--all English composers have this problem to one extent or other outside England. For what it's worth, I wrote about the problem of carrying the English symphony to the rest of the world, among other things, in my introduction to "Overview of English Symphonys" in the July/August American Record Guide--quoted below _________________ After Mahler's death the symphony languished in the German-speaking world, but took on renewed vigor elsewhere: Scandinavia, Russia, the USA--and in England as well". That was how John McKelvey began the first Overview of English Symphonies (May/June 1992). He noted that the major English symphonists are "first and foremost Elgar, Vaughan Williams, and Walton, but significant works... have also been composed by Alwyn, Bax, Bliss, Brian, Britten, Moeran, Tippett, and many more. We are beginning to see recordings of Stanford and Parry from an earlier generation as well". How right he was. The Elgar, Vaughan Williams, and Walton symphonies are well represented these days, and we also have one or more sets by Alwyn, Bax, Rubbra, Tippett, Arnold, Lloyd, Stanford, Parry, and a Brian project in progress. The British symphony has arrived, at least on recordings. McKelvey raised a couple of interesting points in his Overview. The first is his contention that the British symphony has not traveled well to the US; that could be verified by a study of American concert programs. McKelvey was writing specifically about Elgar, but you don't see many performances of Walton or Vaughan Williams symphonies, either--forget Bax, Alwyn, etc.--while works by Germans and Austrians are everywhere. One reason for this neglect is that in the early and middle part of the century when our musical tastes were being formed, most conductors of American orchestras came from Germanic countries and a few from France and Italy. None of these countries is a stronghold of British music. Deep speculation as to why is beyond the scope of this survey, but island Britain was isolated culturally from the Continent (cultures move around better by land than by sea), and British conductors didn't push their country's music abroad. The World Wars didn't help. Elgar's First Symphony was very popular in Germany before World War I, but by war's end he was a non-person. The trend continued through World War II, by which time American musical tastes were pretty well formed. Certainly English music has its own character. It is imbued with the English countryside and the ocean with its rocky coastline and cliff-sides. It is also full of English history, literature, and Celtic and Irish folklore. This gives it, in the words of Phil Haldeman, "a sense of mystery that's quite apart from German, French, or Italian sensibilities. It is music whose romanticism is essentially dark." Not darkness as absence of light, but as the kind that hides secrets and begs the listener to search for their substance. English music is actually quite colorful, not with the sunny reds and yellows of the Mediterranean, but with the softer pastels of a misty day on a moor. It never forces itself on you. It is emotional without sobbing, reserved, yet bold--noble but rarely pompous (though it has its moments). Some of it is walking and marching music, not with arrogance, but with a confidence bordering on serenity. English composers loved the orchestra and reveled in its dark sonorities. Strings are warm and textured, and they did not spare the brass, often bringing it to the forefront with chordal passages, brilliant flourishes, and long melodies. And English symphonies sing. All great music has melody, but English melody is very vocal and distinctive, though what makes it distinctive is hard to define. Harold Schonberg suggested that it follows the pattern of English speech, ending a sentence upward. Others point to its modal quality. Whatever it is, no country's composers talk about "tunes" as much as England's do. Perhaps this comes from the English choral tradition. The English have always sung, and they didn't stop when they wrote symphonies. Another issue McKelvey raised was the disparity between the reserved British and the extroverted American approach to the English symphony. The distinction is valid if oversimplified. Not all British conductors are reserved, some Americans are, some do not reside in their accustomed camp on every work, and some are difficult to classify. Nor are all the conductors who have recorded these works English or American, though they do tend to fall into one stylistic category or the other. The point is worth mentioning because some ARG critics believe English music is more romantic, heartfelt, colorful, and dramatic when played in the American style; the British approach makes it sound too bland and reserved. Others, including this writer, believe that it is the essence of English music not to reveal everything at a single hearing. Of course, we like some "American" performances just as some "American" colleagues like some "British" ones. (Quotes imply style, not nationality.) But the distinction does exist on our staff. These differences apply mainly to conducting styles. Nearly all the orchestras are British, and they sound it, with sleek, polished strings, straightforward winds, and polite, blended, but not unassertive brass. The conducting personification of the British approach is Adrian Boult. A friend and champion of Elgar and Vaughan Williams (and Holst), Boult recorded their symphonies several times. He led the premieres of VW's Third, Fourth, and Sixth, and the first recording of his Ninth as well as the first triumphant Elgar Second. He had the trust of these composers, often working with them while recording a work. In discussing her husband's Fourth Symphony, Ursula Vaughan Williams observed that "Adrian had created the second movement" adding that VW "had not known how it should go, but Adrian had". In his younger and middle years, Boult was more energetic than in his autumnal period in the 1970s when he made his famous (and slower, more atmospheric) stereo recordings. Boult's detractors, more of them American than British, find those late recordings bland, plodding, and discursive. His admirers hear in them a culmination of wisdom gained through a lifetime of conducting this music. We hear in them interpretations that do not wow so much as build to a whole. They are steady and solid, with a structured bass line, and he always seemed to find the right tempo. (Either that or he convinced us that the tempo he chose was right.) Just as important was Boult's grasp of the English idiom and his "affinity for the secular mysticism of the music", as Haldeman put it. Joining Boult stylistically--broadly speaking--are Andrew Davis (always Andrew in this survey unless Colin is indicated), Richard Hickox, Edward Downes, James Loughran, Bryden Thomson, George Hurst, Andre Previn, Paul Daniel, David Lloyd-Jones, Norman del Mar, Bernard Haitink, Vernon Handley, Myer Fredman, Roger Norrington, and Alexander Gibson. Leonard Slatkin is probably the leading "American" stylist. Slatkin has put in a lot of time and effort to make himself a fine conductor of British music, so much so that he is well-respected and liked by British audiences and performers. He took up the Elgar Third Symphony early on, conducting it in New York and Washington soon after its first performances in Britain. If Slatkin resembles any British conductor--and this is a considerable reach--it may be Thomas Beecham, certainly a more animated conductor than late Boult. (But Beecham never recorded an English symphony. He once did a tour with Elgar's First where he cut off a little more of the score at each stop.) Slatkin can be dramatic and colorful in British music, with faster tempos, angular lines, and sometimes impulsive gestures. Detractors of Slatkin miss the breadth, weight, nobility, and reserve of the British approach. He is often joined stylistically by David Zinman, Georg Solti, Yehudi Menuhin, James Judd, Kees Bakels, Charles Mackerras, Paavo Berglund, Raymond Leppard, and Bernstein. Defying classification altogether is John Barbirolli. Half-Italian, British born, passionate, romantic, earthy, extroverted in a quasi-Italian style, yet unmistakably British, Barbirolli is the one conductor with a large body of work in the English symphony whom we all like in just about everything he did. If Boult had a sense of tempo, Barbirolli could do wonders with a melodic line: he seemed to sense its curvature, knowing just when to lilt and when to reign in, as Lawrence Hanson put it. He was the street-wise Londoner to Boult's noble Englishman. Barbirolli recorded both Elgar symphonies but none by Walton. For reasons that elude me, he did not commercially record a complete Vaughan Williams set--ironic, given that it was VW who dedicated his Eighth Symphony to Barbirolli and dubbed him "Glorious John". But at least he gave us five. Roger Hecht *********************************************** The CLASSICAL mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's HDMail High Deliverability Mailer for reliable, lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html