Search - Edward Elgar, Thomas Beecham :: Sir Thomas Beecham Conducts Elgar

A paradox.

John Austin | Kangaroo Ground, Australia | 08/12/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Listening to this superb reissue of Elgar's music conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham, you would never guess that it enshrines a paradox. Beecham had no special liking for Elgar's music, he seldom performed it and almost never recorded it. He turned down Elgar's offer to dedicate his "Falstaff" to him. By all accounts, recording these three works was not a task he enjoyed, and he contrived to achieve it successfully in a small number of recording sessions in 1954.



The results belie all this. Nowhere else will you find such cheekiness, in the "Cockaigne" Overture, such grace in the Serenade, and such grandeur in the "Enigma" Variations. Don't be deterred by the age of the performances, either. Beecham's mastery of orchestral balance, and the especially fine sound engineering ensure that each work achieves full impact.



A young music critic, reviewing this recording at first release, complained of some ragged string playing at the start of one of the "Enigma" variation. "Please tell your young man," responded Sir Thomas in a letter to the editor of the magazine in which the review had appeared, "that we had the recorded passage in question played back to us at half speed and the ensemble was perfect."

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