What's New for June

New from iTunes

Reveiws are by Brian Wilson at Music Web International

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New from Beulah Extra

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Click on image for full size printable inlay image	1st movement 2nd movement 3rd movement 4th movement
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Click on image for full size printable inlay image	1st movement 2nd movement 3rd movement
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Click on image for full size printable inlay image	1st movement 2nd movement 3rd movement
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Click on image for full size printable inlay image	1st movement 2nd movement 3rd movement 4th movement

Critical Comment

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"Several very valuable classic recordings are here gathered together... The recordings of Bach and the earlier composers here are musical fossils – they don’t sing the music like that anymore – but fossils can be fascinating and these are very good exemplars of their kind. For all the progress that has been made in the performance of the music of the pre-classical period, I can still listen to King’s under Willcocks’ direction in this repertoire with pleasure... Beulah coupling is unique on a single album and the transfer is good – comparable in quality with my CD of the Haydn. In the Gibbons the top line sounds just a fraction glassy but nowhere near as fragile as King’s recordings used to sound on LP." Reissue of the Month by Brian Wilson at Music Web International

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"The opening Aria della battaglia starts surprisingly softly – could this be a rare dud from these performers? – but when the music becomes dramatic they certainly deliver the goods with interest. The other items, by the younger Gabrieli, also justify the description of the original LP as in every way worthy of the music. These performances have hardly dated and the recorded sound is full... I’m amazed at how well these recordings sound more than half a century on." Brian Wilson at Music Web International

Visions of Elgar download offer

14PD15 Visions of Elgar
A 4 disc set can now be downloaded for £7.99

The four disc set contains:

• Sir Adrian Boult conducting
  In the South Overture [Listen]
  Symphony No 2 [Listen]
  Violin Concerto with Alfredo Campoli [Listen]
• Anthony Collins conducting
  Falstaff [Listen]
  Introduction and Allegro for Strings [Listen]
• Eduard van Beinum conducting
  Cockaigne Overture [Listen]
  Cello Concerto with Anthony Pini [Listen]
• Sir Malcolm Sargent conducting
  Dream of Gerontius (extracts) with Richard Lewis and Marjorie Thomas [Listen]
  The Kingdom (extract) with Isobel Bailie [Listen]
  I Sing The Birth with the Royal Choral Society [Listen]
  Imperial March [Listen]
  Pomp and Circumstance Marches Nos 1 and 4 [Listen]
  Variations on an Original Theme (Enigma) [Listen]
• Plus Elgar's vision of:
  Handel - Overtrue in D minor [Listen]
  Bach - Fantasia and Fugue in C minor BWV 537 [Listen]
  Conducted by Albert Coates

Jonathan Swain on CD Review BBC Radio Three 10 November 2007 said:

• Of Richard Lewis singing Gerontius: "Plenty of fire in this singing, fire and fear".
• Of Sir Adrian Boult conducting In The South: " The overture pretty much unknown when this performance happened in 1944, you'd never guess though from the playing here"..."the faster sections of the performance by the way were the leaping vitality an older Sir Adrian couldn't or did not want to muster."
• On Anthony Collins conducting Falstaff: "A great many details here tell of Collins the film composer. They can be very subtle though never unsubtle. The art is knowing how far to go."..."everything superbly animated. It leaps out at you."
• On Van Beinum conducting Cockaigne Overture;" What a revelation the performance still is."..." Everything here precisely articulated and has a wonderful lift to it." ..."Breezing through it." ..."It sounds live but it wasn't".
• On the Violin Concerto: "I couldn't possibly be without the Violin Concerto with Alfredo Campoli."..."To hear Campoli in this Elgar concerto alone is to sit in on a violin master class as comprehensive as it gets. The tone is sweet, the technique flawless, the imagination boundless. "..."A lucky concerto on disc but never I think graced with violin playing like that. Its con amori always bel canto, effortless, as light as air and unfailingly musical, in a word unique."
• "A very collectable four cd set"

Robert Matthew Walker writes in an Elgar Sesquicentenary Re-issues Round Up published in International Record Collector November 2007:

The first disc is all Sargent and is a stunning reminder of just how fine a conductor he was in this repertoire. It may seem odd initially to pick out his LSO recordings of the first and fourth Pomp and Circumstance and the Imperial Marches, but I was brought up short by his spellbinding, indeed magisterial account of No.1. Here Sargent's tempos are immensely broad and entirely without the hectic 'Last Night of the Proms' hysteria... and (he) follows this with a very good Enigma. Sargent obtains fine playing. The Decca mono recordings are staggeringly good and have been superbly transferred. The all- Boult conducted CD contains his first HMV - 1944- recording of the Second Symphony...this is the best interpretation of the eventual five he made. There is an intensity here from the latter half of the first movement through to the end of the work which is utterly gripping - the slow movement is so intensely moving...there is an almost indefinable element of intense conviction which no other recording, including Elgar's, has. Boult also conducts the first Decca recording of the Violin Concerto...so admirable in many ways, to which Campoli brings warmth and genuinely expressive rubarto as well as a comprehensive technique. This is followed by Decca's earlier recording of the Cello Concerto with Anthony Pini. It remains a very fine reading. Finally two rare and important historic recordings, both Elgar transcriptions of eighteenth-century music with the LSO conducted by Albert Coates. Considering the age of the originals the transfers are remarkably vivid and make an admirable appendix to the genuine music by Elgar in the rest of the set. This is a set of considerable musical substance and one that I urge upon all serious Elgarians. I cannot urge it upon you strongly enough.

" The list of performers in itself guarantees a high standard of performance. " John Steane in Gramophone February 2008

Visions of Elgar is still available as a boxed set, four discs for the price of three. £34.35 but it can also be downloaded from iTunes for only £7.99!

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