Elgar conducts his own music on CD
The Elgar Birthplace Museum is delighted to be able to make available a unique collection of recordings - Elgar conducting his own music from the 1920s and 1930s; a super-budget 9 CD box set with a price of only £21.95, less than £2.50 per disc.
For a full track listing visit our shop pages.
Elgar's Recording Career
Elgar's first venture into the recording studio came in January 1914. At the suggestion of Landon Ronald, he was invited to the HMV studios to conduct a recording of his most recently composed short orchestral piece Carissima.
At that time, recordings were made using the 'acoustic' method, whereby sounds were played into a horn, the end of which was attached to a needle which cut the vibrations directly on to a disc. This had two main drawbacks; firstly, the size of the orchestra had to be drastically reduced, as only a limited number of musicians could actually group around the horn; secondly, the sound of the lower strings could hardly be heard at all, so their parts were often re-written for brass instruments.
Despite these restrictions, the results must have seemed miraculous at the time, and Elgar, delighted with his first record, was offered a contract.
Elgar was one of the first major composers to realise the educational value of recordings, to say nothing of the much needed extra income he would receive, and he set about cutting and re-scoring many of his works for recordings.
1925 saw the introduction of the microphone into the studio and the 'electrical' age had come to recordings. There was no longer any need for the re-writing of parts, and a full symphony orchestra could now be recorded with a vastly improved play-back sound.
Elgar's visits to the recording studio became more frequent and he eventually recorded virtually all of his orchestral works - large and small. The microphone also enabled location recording, and extracts from his large choral works, including The Dream of Gerontius were recorded at the Royal Albert Hall and Hereford Cathedral.
Elgar's recordings of his own music have, in some cases, never been bettered, and their transfer to CD has made us all realise that they are far more than just historical documents; they are masterful performances. It is the later electrical recordings from 1925 -1934 that have been brought together for this box set of CDs. Digitally re-mastered, much of the snap, crackle and pop associated with many archive releases has been expertly removed, but at the same time keeping the vibrant immediacy of Elgar's own performances.
For a full track listing click here for our shop pages.
