Sir Adrian Boult
The Warner Classics Edition, Complete Stereo recordings 1956-78 on HMV, World Record Club, Columbia, Pye Nixa, EMI Classics, Warner Classics, Waverley
Warner Classics 2173258504 [79 CDs]

This is the companion box to Boult’s mono legacy, reviewed in November last year, which  consisted of 36 CDs. This stereo box is more than twice as big, a tribute to his longevity, consistency and importance for those labels for which he worked. His recording career extended for very nearly 60 years, from recordings made in 1920-21 to his valedictory Parry recording in 1978, and therefore from acoustics to experimental digital recording. As ever, I need add the caveat that these two boxes do not constitute the ‘Complete Boult’ as they only include material for which Warner has the rights – no acoustic Edison Bells in the first box, for example, and no Deccas, Vanguards or Lyritas here. Australian Eloquence has three Boult boxes of Deccas for you to get your teeth into, all reviewed on this site.

Boult’s mono legacy ran from 1920 to 1957 and his stereo from 1956-78. One admirable feature of the box is that it runs chronologically, so we begin with sessions for Pye Nixa/Westminster where, for contractual reasons, the LPO was called the Philharmonic Promenade Orchestra. These first sessions were devoted to his signature Elgar work, the Second Symphony, which he’d recorded on 78s just over a decade earlier with a white-hot BBC Symphony Orchestra. The 1956-57 LPO was not the equal of the pre-war BBC and both this fact and the occasionally scruffy nature of the recordings must be acknowledged. Nevertheless, despite the occasional imprecisions and the thinness of the strings, Boult’s conception of the symphony’s structural integrity is absolute. There are two other recordings of the work in this box, the Waverley LP of 1963 with the Scottish National Orchestra, similarly let down by orchestral ill-discipline and an underpowered string section – see review – and his final thoughts for EMI in sessions ranging from 1975-76. As ever with Boult, some of the late live performances contain some of his most radical reworkings and most impressive interpretations. Falstaff is direct, linear yet flexible and Cockaigne is avuncular and outgoing; both were to be re-recorded in years to come.

Boult had a somewhat uneasy relationship with the music of Walton, but his reading of the First Symphony is pretty good for its time, even though he remained troubled by its explosions of malice. This performance was also reissued by Somm. CDs 4-6 are taken up by his Schumann symphony cycle made in August 1956. These are really interesting but fallible as the LPO, again under its pseudonym, isn’t always capable of delivering the goods at some of the very fast tempi Boult sets. The opening of No.1, for example, is fiery and Boult’s performances of the symphonies in general bears a superficial similarity with Wolfgang Sawallich’s 1972 cycle but in the Dresden Staatskapelle Sawallich has an incomparably better orchestra, and far better recorded. Still, early in his career Boult sought out the Clara Schumann pupil Fanny Davies who played through the symphonies at the piano with him and gave him some perceptive hints as to how to reconcile the music. Both Nos. 2 and 3 feature exceptionally fast movements but it’s the latter that is consistently driven. No.4 is highly committed and its dimensions are admirable.

Boult isn’t known for his Berlioz but he had recorded three overtures pre-war – Les francs-juges, Le roi Lear and Le Carnaval romain. These were duly re-recorded in 1956 to which he added five more overtures. Like Schumann, he drives them quite hard but paces internal contrasts finely.  Demerits include the brass and wind tuning. Nor is he known for Britten, but CD 8 is an 86-minute all-Britten disc. The Four Sea Interludes are very accomplished and in slightly more immediate sound than in others from these Pye Nixa-Westminster sessions. It’s known that Britten, rather like EJ Moeran, didn’t much rate Boult but he conducts perceptively and with due allowance for the character of each piece. He had recorded the Passacaglia from Peter Grimes back in December 1945 for the BBC’s Transcription Service (I have a copy) and reprises it here, very successfully. Britten’s arrangements of Rossini are pithily and wittily conducted. There is The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, without speaker and as a bonus the same performance in mono with Boult as speaker. This mono version wasn’t included in the mono box.

Boult made three recordings of Dohnányi’s Variations on a Nursery Song, two with Julius Katchen for Decca, and this version with the 79-year-old composer at the keyboard, to which they added the Piano Concerto No.2. The composer-executant isn’t finger perfect but he is full of spirit.  Boult enjoyed the elevated accompaniment of Beecham’s Royal Philharmonic here, as he does in Dvořák’s Cello Concerto with Rostropovich, my own favourite of all Rostropovich’s recordings of the work. Coupled on this disc is a rather under-the-radar recording – Louis Kentner’s 1958 recording of Brahms’ Piano Concerto No.2 with the Philharmonia. This finally appeared on CD in 2021 as part of Profil’s 10-CD Kentner retrospective but it’s especially good to have it here. When it was originally issued it came up against almost simultaneously released versions by Gilels with Reiner and Ashkenazy with Ludwig Leopold, which proved too much competition. It’s a fine account, though, even if it’s not in the Gilels/Reiner league and most sympathetically accompanied by Boult. Another brilliant and overlooked pianist is Mindru Katz who performs the Khachaturian and Prokofiev No.1 concertos (see my review when the concertos, with other works, were reissued on Cembal d’amour). The run of great pianists continues with Annie Fischer’s beautifully phrased and eloquently poised recordings of two Mozart Concertos, Nos. 20 and 23. The Previn-Boult collaboration in Concertos 17 and 24 can also be heard in Warner’s Previn box.

A few days after the Fischer sessions, Boult recorded Tchaikovsky with Menuhin. Unpublished at the time, the Sérénade mélancolique eventually appeared in 2003 but the Concerto only appeared in 2016 in a box called ‘The Menuhin Century’ when its missing cadenza was finally discovered. There is a bit of tremulous tone from the soloist and some fingerboard incidents but it’s otherwise an idiosyncratic and powerfully resolved performance. The two Beethoven Romances are appearing in stereo for the first time. Next is a vocal recital by Victoria de los Ángeles – Handel and Mozart – which is beautifully sung but in the Handel verbally incomprehensible. Christa Ludwig sings Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen with raptness. He also accompanied Flagstad in this, for Decca. His accompaniment for Blanche Thebom in 1950 wasn’t in the mono box and I’m still wondering why – contractual reasons?

The first of the two commercial versions of the Enigma Variations in this box – the other was in 1970 – and was recorded for World Record Club in 1961 and is notable for a somewhat more expansive view of Nimrod which Boult does with great nobility. There is also the earlier of his two stereo EMI versions of the Introduction and Allegro, strong and sturdy and not as passionate as Barbirolli.  He was paired with Shura Cherkassky in 1965 for the Grieg and Schumann Concertos. The pianist is quixotic in phrasing but commanding in his presentation of both works and is particularly interesting in the slow pages of the Grieg’s finale. The Schumann is, if anything, more personalized, its pellucid and extrovert elements well balanced though decidedly not in the Fanny Davies ‘School of Clara’ tradition.

There’s not much to be said of Boult’s recording of the Elgar Violin Concerto with either Ida Haendel (arthritically slow at 55 minutes) or with Menuhin but, whilst I have the LP, I’ve not come across a prior CD of Sergei Barsukov’s Piano Concerto No.2, in which the composer plays the solo part. The LP paired it with his Violin Concerto No.2 with soloist Georges Tessier. The Piano Concerto is a one-movement work, freely rhapsodic but with distinct sections with interesting wind writing and plenty of giocoso wit. Appropriately for so visual/filmic a work – it has a strong ‘storyline’ – it was recorded at Denham Film Studios. Boult’s longest studio The Planets was with the New Philharmonia in 1966 where he eased the tempo somewhat to 51 minutes (he generally took it at 49 or so). In his penultimate EMI studio recording in 1978 he was back to 48.

Talk of Menuhin, Cherkassky, Fischer and other elite soloists shouldn’t blind one to Boult’s solicitous work with up-and-coming performers. One such was violinist Maureen Smith who recorded the Mendelssohn Concerto for World Record Club in 1966 with Boult and the LPO. This must be another first-CD appearance, and it preserves a musical, fresh, somewhat regret-laden performance. Smith was the daughter of the well-known pedagogue Eta Cohen, whose ‘Eta Cohen Method’ is something of a pedagogic textbook for young players. It’s coupled with Mendelssohn’s Fourth Symphony which he’d recorded, along with No.3, for Nixa back in 1954. Stereo obviously confers a greater sonic depth and breadth and Boult proves a fine Mendelssohnian. Talking of which, Warner doesn’t seem to possess the rights to HMV’s recordings of the Mendelssohn and other concertos Boult made with Michael Rabin in 1957.

CD 21 – are we really only up to CD 21? – is a mixed salad of music from the East – Glinka (Boult is no Mravinsky), Smetana, Rimsky and then a separate ‘Tchaikovsky Spectacular’ with the usual suspects: all very decent but not much more. When, incidentally, if ever, will we hear Boult’s wartime transcription discs of the complete Má Vlast?  Cherkassky returns for a rather measured and personal Tchaikovsky Concerto in 1967 and a little later Hyman Bress, the South African-born, but longtime Canadian resident, played the same composer’s Violin Concerto. Fruitful contrasts can be set up with Menuhin here, should one want to. Bress was something of a modern music specialist and is probably best remembered for his magnificent Bloch Concerto recording but he plays Tchaikovsky with freedom and fine tone. Aficionados will know that Boult also recorded this concerto for Decca with Mischa Elman. Bress returns for a Beethoven Romance in a ‘Popular Orchestral Favourites’ disc that I’ve never seen on CD before. Also making its first CD appearance is ‘The Instruments of the Orchestra’ with named members of the LPO – familiar names from Rodney Friend to Tristan Fry – and Boult acting as speaker and, on three tracks, pianist.

Other miscellaneous items include the albums ‘Bravo!’ and ‘Marches for Orchestra’, the contents of which were scattered in the box set called Sir Adrian Boult – The Complete Conductor, from Tchaikovsky to Gershwin’ (see review).

There are some elements of Boult’s discography into which it’s not really necessary to delve given the multiple reissues of such material and that the examples here come from pre-existing transfers. Such include most of the Elgar recordings such as The Music Makers, with Janet Baker, a work for which, I suspect, most Elgarians feel affection. The great trilogy is here, of course. The Dream of Gerontius, The Kingdom, which Boult admired more than Gerontius, and The Apostles are all here, as is Tortelier’s excellent Cello Concerto and much more. I’m also going to disregard in toto Boult’s Vaughan Williams. There are plenty of reviews on site of this material. I must note however that sandwiched in CD 31 is the composite Boult-Klemperer Strauss Don Quixote heard in a 2022 remastering. This recording came about as a result of Klemperer walking out of Jacqueline du Pré’s recording session. Fortunately, the tapes were running when Boult took over a studio run-through and most of the performance is therefore his. It’s a fine one too, the violist being the outstanding Herbert Downes.

I touched on the Brahms cycle, split between the LSO (Symphony 3, Tragic Overture) and LPO, in the context of the earlier mono cycle. There is more accompanying on CD 41 where Josef Suk plays the Beethoven Concerto in a leisurely performance notable for its refined and unhurried lyrical restraint. He plays the cadenza of his eminent compatriot, Váša Příhoda. Menuhin returns for a fine brace of concertos by Malcolm Williamson and Lennox Berkeley on CD 44, which demonstrates a side to him that is less often noted, his promotion of new music. Williamson’s Concerto was composed for Edith Sitwell who died before it was completed and has certain Berg and Prokofiev-like elements, both threnodic and March-mocking. It’s an excellent, convincing work, structurally and thematically, and I can’t think why it has been overlooked for so long – maybe its lack of elite modernism had something to do with its sniffy critical reception. Berkeley’s Concerto, again composed for Menuhin, is a cleaner, more Gallic work, with a 12-tone row infiltrated in the second movement, a Passacaglia. Again, though, an excellent work.  

Boult could have developed as an operatic conductor. He’d worked for Diaghilev and his earliest pre-BBC recordings reflected some of these affiliations. In later years he tended to muse about these lost opportunities, though with Beecham ruling Covent Garden and the young Barbirolli taking on the BNOC it’s hard to see where Boult might have fitted in. However, he was given bleeding chunks of Wagner to conduct on several discs and there’s some evidence – a richly, even opulently – but not bombastically – conducted Prelude to Act I of Die Meistersinger – to show that he had a real affinity for the Wagnerian repertoire at least.  Siegfried Idyll is particularly touching and the excerpts from Parsifal offer refinement rather than theatrical burnish.

Boult was always known for his Schubert and his 1972 Ninth Symphony – the LP with Joy Finzi’s drawing of the conductor on the front of the jacket – is a testimony to his prowess and consistency. It joins the two mono traversals and live broadcasts. A less familiar element of his discography is Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, performances of which the booklet note writer describes as ‘wacky’. I don’t find them ‘wacky’ at all. They’re Old School irradiated with instrumental elements of the historically-informed brigade – thus Rodney Friend and Gerald Jarvis are the fiddlers but David Munrow and John Turner play recorders in No.4, Raymond Leppard is harpsichordist in No.5, and Valda Aveling in No.6. Of course, there’s less transparency than one would expect from contemporary performers but that’s only to be expected. I had a thoroughly good time reacquainting myself with these recordings which have been reissued at least a couple of times on CD before now. 

Arthur Bliss’ Music for Strings and Howells’ Concerto for string orchestra are core Boult repertoire and works he prepared and executed with dedication and eloquence. He’d recorded the former back in 1937 – it’s in the mono box – but, most valuably, this was to be his sole recording of the latter.  CD 68 is devoted to Mozart Symphonies, Nos.41, its opening intact with repeats, and 35 and both healthily middle-of-the road performances. Beethoven’s Pastoral sits on its own on CD 75 and evinces an unforced eloquence, the Scene by the Brook being taken at a healthy tempo.  Almost the last thing Boult recorded in the studio were the Brahms Serenades, tangy, evocative performances brimming with youthful vitality – a classic. Then came his last The Planets, another exalted performance and finally a valedictory Parry recording, of the Fifth Symphony, the Symphonic Variations and the Elegy for Brahms. It was apt to end on that note as Parry was one of the harbingers of the new and a generous friend to British composers and executants alike.

Art & Son have transferred portions of this set but not as much as one might imagine. Their work is confined to the earlier years and concerns transfers of the first 28 CDs except Nos 11-15, (though they do remaster the Barsukov Concerto on CD 18),19, most of 21, 22, 24 and 26, all of which are heard in older transfers. Their work, as usual in this field, is perfectly fine but one can’t expect miracles in early stereo and I don’t sense the slight but appreciable advances in depth one felt in their Klemperer and Barbirolli boxes. 

That said, these 79 CDs contain a great deal that will be unfamiliar to most people and there were many discs which I’d not come across, albeit of a more popular kind – the compilations, the marches, the spectaculars, and some of the Boult-the-Accompanist discs. This is a handsome set that will prove its worth over the long run for collectors.

Jonathan Woolf   

See also Ralph Moore’s review.

Buying this recording via a link below generates revenue for MWI, which helps the site remain free

Contents
CD 1 ELGAR Symphony No. 2
CD 2 ELGAR Falstaff · Cockaigne
CD 3 WALTON Symphony No. 1
CD 4 SCHUMANN Symphonies Nos. 1 ‘Spring’ & 2
CD 5 SCHUMANN Symphonies Nos. 3 ‘Rhenish’ & 4
CD 6 BERLIOZ Overtures: Le Corsaire · Les Francs-juges · Benvenuto Cellini · Waverley
CD 7 BERLIOZ Overtures: Le Carnaval romain · Rob Roy · Béatrice et Bénédict · Le Roi Lear
CD 8 BRITTEN Four Sea Interludes · Passacaglia · The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra · Matinées musicales · Soirées musicales
CD 9 DOHNÁNYI Variations on a Nursery Song · Piano Concerto No. 2 (Dohnányi)
CD 10 DVOŘÁK Cello Concerto (Rostropovich) | BRAHMS Piano Concerto No. 2 (Kentner)
CD 11 KHACHATURIAN Piano Concerto | PROKOFIEV Piano Concerto No. 1 (Katz)
CD 12 MOZART Piano Concertos Nos. 20 & 23 (A. Fischer)
CD 13 TCHAIKOVSKY Violin Concerto · Sérénade mélancolique | BEETHOVEN Romances Nos. 1 & 2 (Menuhin)
CD 14 HANDEL Arias from Judas Maccabaeus & Acis and Galatea | MOZART Exsultate, jubilate · Ch’io mi scordi di te? (los Angeles) || MAHLER Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen | WAGNER Im Treibhaus (Ludwig)
CD 15 ELGAR Enigma Variations (1961) · Introduction and Allegro (1961)
CD 16 ELGAR Symphony No. 2
CD 17 GRIEG & SCHUMANN Piano Concertos (Cherkassky)
CD 18 ELGAR Violin Concerto (Menuhin) | BARSUKOV Piano Concerto No. 2 (Barsukov)
CD 19 HOLST The Planets (1966)
CD 20 MENDELSSOHN Violin Concerto (M. Smith) · Symphony No. 4 “Italian”
CD 21 GLINKA Ruslan and Lyudmila: Overture | SMETANA Die Moldau · The Bartered Bride (excerpts) | RIMSKY-KORSAKOV Dance of the Tumblers | TCHAIKOVSKY 1812 Overture · Slavonic March · Romeo and Juliet
CD 22 ELGAR The Music Makers (Baker) | PARRY Blest Pair of Sirens
CD 23 TCHAIKOVSKY Piano Concerto No. 1 | LITOLFF Concerto Symphonique: Scherzo (Cherkassky) || TCHAIKOVSKY Violin Concerto | SARASATE Zigeunerweisen (Bress)
CD 24 VAUGHAN WILLIAMS Symphony No. 6 · The Lark Ascending (Bean)
CD 25 Popular Orchestral Favourites: MOZART Die Zauberflöte: Overture | BEETHOVEN Romance for violin No. 2 (Bress) | BRAHMS Academic Festival Overture | SUPPÉ Dichter und Bauer: Overture | PONCHIELLI Dance of the Hours | J. STRAUSS I Radetzky-Marsch
CD 26 ELGAR The Wand of Youth, Suites 1 & 2 · Chanson de nuit · Chanson de matin · Three Bavarian Dances
CD 27 Sir Adrian Boult introduces the instruments of the orchestra
CD 28 Bravo! WALTON Portsmouth Point Overture | BRUCH Kol Nidrei | CLARKE Trumpet Voluntary | SAINT-SAËNS Danse macabre · Wedding Cake | GERSHWIN Cuban Overture | STRAVINSKY Circus Polka for a Young Elephant | WOLF-FERRARI Intermezzo | FALLA Ritual Fire Dance
CD 29 Marches for Orchestra
CD 30 TCHAIKOVSKY Nutcracker Suite · The Sleeping Beauty Suite
CD 31 VAUGHAN WILLIAMS Symphony No. 4 · Norfolk Rhapsody No. 1 | R. STRAUSS Don Quixote (du Pré, Downes, Bradley)
CD 32 VAUGHAN WILLIAMS Symphony No. 3 “A Pastoral Symphony” · In the Fen Country
CD 32-33 VAUGHAN WILLIAMS “The Wasps” · Symphony No. 1 “A Sea Symphony” (Armstrong, Case)
CD 34-35 ELGAR The Kingdom (Price, Minton, Young, Shirley-Quirk)
CD 35 VAUGHAN WILLIAMS Symphony No. 8 · Concerto for two pianos (Vronsky, Babin)
CD 36 VAUGHAN WILLIAMS Symphony No. 5 · Serenade to Music
CD 37 VAUGHAN WILLIAMS Symphony No. 7 “Sinfonia antartica” (Burrowes)
CD 38 VAUGHAN WILLIAMS Symphony No. 9 · Fantasia on the “Old 104th” Psalm Tune (Katin)
CD 39 ELGAR Enigma Variations (1970) · VAUGHAN WILLIAMS Fantasia on “Greensleeves” · English Folk Song Suite · Job – A Masque for Dancing
CD 40 BRAHMS Tragic Overture · Symphony No. 3
CD 41 BEETHOVEN Violin Concerto (Suk) · Coriolan
CD 42 ELGAR Overtures: Cockaigne · Froissart · ‘Handel in D minor’ · In the South
CD 43 BRAHMS Symphony No. 2 · Alto Rhapsody (Baker)
CD 44 WILLIAMSON & BERKELEY Violin Concertos (Menuhin)
CD 45-46 VAUGHAN WILLIAMS The Pilgrim’s Progress (Noble, Herincx, Case) · In rehearsal
CD 47 VAUGHAN WILLIAMS Symphony No. 2 “A London Symphony”
CD 48 BRUCH Violin Concertos Nos. 1 & 2 (Menuhin)
CD 49 Sir Adrian conducts WAGNER: Excerpts from Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Tristan und Isolde, Tannhäuser, Lohengrin
CD 50 BRAHMS Symphony No. 1
CD 51 BRAHMS Academic Festival Overture · Symphony No. 4
CD 52 SCHUBERT Symphony No. 9 ‘Great’
CD 53-54 BACH The Brandenburg Concertos
CD 55 ELGAR Cello Concerto (Tortelier) · Introduction and Allegro (1972) · Serenade
CD 56 Sir Adrian conducts WAGNER, vol. 2: Excerpts from Die Walküre, Siegfried, Götterdämmerung, Tannhäuser, Tristan und Isolde
CD 57 Sir Adrian conducts WAGNER, vol. 3: Siegfried Idyll · Excerpts from Parsifal
CD 58 VAUGHAN WILLIAMS Dona nobis pacem · Toward the Unknown Region (Armstrong, Case)
CD 59 ELGAR Falstaff · Fantasia and Fugue in C minor (transc. from Bach) · The Sanguine Fan
CD 60 MOZART Piano Concertos Nos. 17 & 24 (Previn)
CD 61 BLISS Music for strings | HOWELLS Concerto for string orchestra
CD 62-63 ELGAR The Apostles (Armstrong, Watts, Tear, Luxon)
CD 64 Sir Adrian conducts WAGNER, vol. 4: Excerpts from Der fliegende Holländer, Das Rheingold, Tannhäuser, Rienze · A Faust Overture | TCHAIKOVSKY Suite No. 3 in G major
CD 65 ELGAR Triumphal March · Carillon · Funeral March · Dream Children · Elegy · Grania and Diarmid · Polonia · Meditation
CD 66 HOLST First Choral Symphony
CD 67 TCHAIKOVSKY Capriccio italien · Gopak · Slavonic March RIMSKY-KORSAKOV Capriccio espagnol · Mlada: Procession of the Nobles
CD 68 MOZART Symphonies Nos. 41 “Jupiter” & 35 “Haffner”
CD 69 VAUGHAN WILLIAMS Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis · Concerto Grosso · Partita for double string orchestra
CD 70 WAGNER Wesendonck-Lieder | R. STRAUSS 4 Lieder (Baker)
CD 70-71 ELGAR The Dream of Gerontius (Watts, Gedda, Lloyd)
CD 72 ELGAR Symphony No. 2
CD 73 ELGAR Symphony No. 1
CD 74 ELGAR Pomp and Circumstance · 2 Marches | WALTON Crown Imperial · Orb and Sceptre
CD 75 BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 6 “Pastoral”
CD 76 ELGAR Violin Concerto (Haendel)
CD 77 BRAHMS Serenades Nos. 1 & 2 · Variations on a Theme by Haydn
CD 78 HOLST The Planets (1978)
CD 79 PARRY Symphony No. 5 “Symphonic Fantasia” · Symphonic Variations · Elegy for Brahms
London Philharmonic Orchestra · London Symphony Orchestra · New Philharmonia Orchestra · Philharmonia Orchestra · Royal Philharmonic Orchestra · Scottish National Orchestra · London Philharmonic Choir · John Alldis Choir
Newly remastered in HD by Art & Son Studio