Elgar: Piano Works

Advantages: Committed performance, spacious recording, low price
Disadvantages: None

...wanted to respect the composer's dying wish not to allow anyone to "tinker" with his symphony. However, in 1995, realising that in ten years time the copyright on the sketches would expire, the family commissioned Anthony Payne, a composer, musicologist and Elgar enthusiast, to use the sketches to construct the symphony Elgar might have written. Payne worked with intensity and excitement, piecing together the "jigsaw" fragments and filling in where necessary. The completed work, described as "The Sketches for Symphony no.3 elaborated by Anthony Payne" was performed for the first time in public in February 1998 by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Andrew Davis to massive critical acclaim. These same forces had recorded the work two months earlier for the NMC label and the recording was released later in 1998. The work could... Read review

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Advantages: It is simply one of the finest pieces of music ever written
Disadvantages: How dare you ask of any disadvantges!?!

...a melody in 9/8 time. In May, Elgar, his wife Alice, and daughter Carice went to their summer residence of Brinkwells, a cottage in Sussex, for some rural relaxation and healing (Elgar loved the countryside). Finally, in August, he suddenly was attacked by a great surge of creativity. He had his piano taken out of storage and wrote a Violin Sonata in E minor, Op.82, which was soon followed by the String Quartet in E minor, Op.83 and Piano Quintet in A minor, Op.84. This sudden surge showed a new streak of creative development in Elgar's music that was more elusive, economical and a million miles away from his bombastic past. The three works were premiered in May 1919, after which Elgar set out on his great summation of this new style (as well as career): the Cello Concerto in E minor, Op.85. There is not much documentation of the work... Read review

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Advantages: Great work
Disadvantages: none

...It is an amazing fact that a year after its first performance Anthony Payne's elaboration of Elgar's sketches for his Third Symphony have become part of the mainstream orchestral repertoire. Payne, a musicologist and a composer, took on the monumental task of pieceing together the few sketches that Elgar left before his death and expanding them in a complete symphony. The results are incredible. Although Payne is cautious to guard against calling the symphony an original Elgar work (as so much was of Payne's invention)the piece has an unmistakable Elgar feeling. Originally recorded by the partnership that gave the work's first performance (Andrew Davis and the BBC Symphony Orchestra) this new recording with the Bournemouth Symphony conducted by Paul Daniel (music director at English National Opera) is a much weightier and envigorating... Read review

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