Sir Edward Elgar (1857-1934)
From the Archives: Volume 1. Premiere Recordings Remastered
Variations on an Original Theme ‘Enigma’, Op.38 (1899) – two versions
Violin Sonata in E minor, Op.82 (1918)
String Quartet in E minor, Op.83 (1918)
Marjorie Hayward (violin), Una Bourne (piano)
London String Quartet
Royal Albert Hall Orchestra/Edward Elgar
New Queen’s Hall Orchestra/Henry Wood
rec. 1919-1924, HMV Studio, Hayes, Vocalion Studio and Columbia Studio, London, UK
SOMM Ariadne 5046 [78]
‘Premiere Recordings’ is the tag for this disc which presents the first recordings of three Elgarian works, the Enigma Variations, conducted by the composer, the Violin Sonata and String Quartet, and reprises the Enigma Variations with the second ever recording, made by Henry Wood in 1924.
Elgar’s HMV recording of the Enigma was made over several sessions during 1920-21. The first session in February 1920 produced only two variations but the remaining two sessions were much more productive. I reviewed this recording when it appeared in Music & Arts’ 4-CD box devoted to Elgar’s complete acoustic recordings. It was transferred by Lani Spahr, who has returned to it for Somm. This recording is a product of its time, with a small and fallible contingent of players battling hard to convey the essence of the score and the first thing to note is that those in the early 20s would have been listening on reproducing equipment which would have masked much of what is now painfully audible to us. Small over-heated studios quickly played havoc with gut strings and winds often went out of tune. The small string section slither around and the winds can be painful to listen to. The percussion is primitive, the play of winds and low brass in Dorabella serio-comic, Nimrod is abridged and much is heroically approximate. Ironically, Spahr’s earlier transfer is warmer and has more room ambience than this one, which has clarified the sectional sound, favouring the higher frequencies – thus inadvertently making the playing sound even more fallible – and it has been, to my ears, excessively de-noised.
Henry Wood recorded for Columbia at this time and his 1924 Enigma is two minutes faster than Elgar’s own and demonstrates the difference between a composer-conductor and a professional conductor. It too is subject to the demands made of the players by the acoustic system and his orchestra is not much bigger than Elgar’s, but the New Queen’s Hall Orchestra makes Elgar’s Royal Albert Hall Orchestra sound like an amateur band. Wood paces thing well, and his phrasing is effective and, not surprisingly, it was recorded on consecutive days, not a year apart. One feels the linear pull of the music as opposed to the jagged musical non-sequiturs of Elgar’s recording. Advances in recording quality, even over a few short years, are evident – contrast the percussion and trombones in particular – and Wood’s wind section is immeasurably superior to Elgar’s. Wood re-recorded it for Decca in 1935 but by then Elgar had re-recorded his version, electrically in 1926, with a significantly improved Royal Albert Hall Orchestra. Hamilton Harty’s excellent version shouldn’t be overlooked either.
In November 1919, eight months after W.H. Reed and Landon Ronald had given the première, Marjorie Hayward and Una Bourne recorded the Violin Sonata. Hayward was a well-equipped, technically accomplished violinist without mannerisms, whose use of portamenti was quite sparing. She formed a discographic duo with the rather erratic Australian pianist Una Bourne – APR has devoted a twofer to Bourne – and together they recorded a small sequence of sonatas. Hayward’s reliability in the studio was rewarded when the Virtuoso Quartet, of which she was leader, and which was established principally to record, made an important series of discs. The first two movements of the Sonata were abridged in half but the finale is intact.
Though Bourne is a little recessed in the balance, Spahr has brought the sound quite forward so that both musicians are well caught. Hayward is crisp and decisive in the opening, and even though she hardly has time to make much of a mark in the Romance second movement, she has time to expand in the finale. It’s clear from her tempo here, which includes the reminiscence theme, that early performances of this work – presumably Reed, certainly Sammons – took it at a forward-moving tempo, allowing the theme to emerge nobly but passionately, and not in a way where the music comes to a standstill.
The last piece is the String Quartet, recorded by the London String Quartet for Vocalion in 1921. The abridgement boils the piece down to eleven minutes and was released with a similar abridgement of Kreisler’s Quartet, of which the group had only recently given the British premiere. Spahr transferred this for Music & Arts back in 2011 and once again he has dampened down all surface noise with the result that the new transfer is airless and rather constricted. I’m sure those who listen will welcome the lack of thistly surface noise but I rather regret its loss and that of the room acoustic.
Andrew Neill’s notes are full and helpful though he’s awry about a few matters such as the violinist Jacques Jacobs (who made the first recording of an Elgar work). I think most people will overwhelmingly appreciate the clarity of Spahr’s transfer work though, respectfully, I am ambivalent.
Jonathan Woolf
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