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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
By op
Format:Audio CD
In my view, this is the best recorded performance of the symphony so far. Previously, I had agreed with the wide consensus and put Paul Daniel in the top spot, but I think Hickox pips him. Most particuarly there is his handling of the second movement. I have always considered this the weak point of the symphony, unfairly to Elgar who was going to include a harmonic sideslip 'that will knock them all flat'. Unfortunately, no one knows what he intended. Nevertheless, I feel that Richard Hickox makes this movement feel like what it was surely intended to be, a reprise between the intensity of the opening and slow movements, rather than a lapse, and he gives it a sense of substance and rythmical impetus lacking elsewhere, as, indeed, he does to the entire symphony.
As for Pomp and Circumstance No.6, I disagree with the previous comment. I find it utterly convincing. Anthony Payne has said that he sometimes feels as though Elgar is standing at his shoulder. He was certainly doing so here. As for the most magical moment for me, the second entry of the trio tune, I think Elgar's ghost must have whispered in Payne's ear.
As for Pomp and Circumstance No.6, I disagree with the previous comment. I find it utterly convincing. Anthony Payne has said that he sometimes feels as though Elgar is standing at his shoulder. He was certainly doing so here. As for the most magical moment for me, the second entry of the trio tune, I think Elgar's ghost must have whispered in Payne's ear.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
3.0 out of 5 stars
3 reviews
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Perhaps the Best Elgar 3rd yet.
9 Dec 2008
By J. F. Laurson
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Audio CD
Anthony Payne spent almost 30 years trying to patch together Elgar's unfinished Third Symphony, with very impressive results, but results that are still hotly debated (more controversially than the various `performing versions' of Mahler's Tenth) today. It's much more convincing than the (fun) Elgar "Piano Concerto", but for all its quality, the second and third movements don't ring true. No performance will ever silence the debates over whether Payne's version is a success (as opposed to `mere attempt'), but this recording comes awfully close. It does so, because Hickox achieves to make the Symphony sound like ¬echt-Elgar, rather than collections of "Elgarian moments" strung together. The issue is made yet more interesting with the inclusions of two more Payne-elaborations: "So Many True Princesses Who Have Gone" and the Sixth Pomp & Circumstance March. The sound is unbeatable.
2.0 out of 5 stars
good reading of Payne's symphony (but I was promised Elgar!!)
17 May 2013
By Jurgen Lawrenz
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Audio CD
I can't understand the babble about "Elgar's unfinished symphony". There is no such thing. Elgar never even got the first movement properly underway. Having read all the prose that accompanied the first publication of this symphony, it seems that no-one is bothered by this outright publicity fraud. The wish is truly the parent of its promise! Yet at least the honest arranger Payne himself stressed that he wrote the work in as close an imitation of Elgar as he could - not pretending that Elgar really had a hand in it. If you don't mind me saying: The same as if Constable had painted a haystack in the corner of a canvas, plus three or four pencil marks elsewhere, and now some academic paints a full canvas in the master's style and exhibits it as a Constable. Would never get away with it in the art world!
In a word, the proper title would be ANTHONY PAYNE: A SYMPHONY ON THEMES OF EDWARD ELGAR.
Now if this interests you, fine - go ahead and buy it.
But I don't appreciate the stunt of putting ELGAR SYMPHONY #3 in big letters on the album's cover, because no such animal can be found on the disc.
In the world of art, where Constable trades for millions, they might even cut out the haystack and frame it separately. But no such courtesy or piety for Elgar!
The two stars are purely for the performance.
I hope Mr Payne continues to live happily in the borrowed light of Elgar, hearing HIS OWN SYMPHONY performed and recorded so often, despite the false pretences.
In a word, the proper title would be ANTHONY PAYNE: A SYMPHONY ON THEMES OF EDWARD ELGAR.
Now if this interests you, fine - go ahead and buy it.
But I don't appreciate the stunt of putting ELGAR SYMPHONY #3 in big letters on the album's cover, because no such animal can be found on the disc.
In the world of art, where Constable trades for millions, they might even cut out the haystack and frame it separately. But no such courtesy or piety for Elgar!
The two stars are purely for the performance.
I hope Mr Payne continues to live happily in the borrowed light of Elgar, hearing HIS OWN SYMPHONY performed and recorded so often, despite the false pretences.
3.0 out of 5 stars
Yes, Perhaps the Best Elgar Third, but...
21 Feb 2013
By J. R. Trtek
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Audio CD
...what about Anthony Payne's realization of the work itself? Here my judgment is mixed. The first and last movements have the indelible feel of Elgar, and good feelings they are. Indeed, if I'm not paying attention I sometimes mistake that last movement for the Second Symphony. In between those bookends, however, are two movements that are tedious, wandering and really rather un-Elgarish, at least to my untrained ear. I've heard the recordings of the work conducted by Andrew Davis and Paul Daniel, and I do think that this one by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales under Richard Hickox does make a better case for the piece than they do, but that still doesn't make it a convincing case. Meanwhile, Payne's orchestration of So Many True Princesses Who Have Gone and his realization of the Pomp and Circumstance March No. 6 are more in tune with those two nondescript middle movements than they do with the more exciting portions of the Symphony No. 3. I found both quite unmemorable. My verdict: Of the 70 minutes of music, 30 of them consist of stirring faux Elgar. Maybe that half hour is going to be worth the price of the disc. Maybe not. Me, I haven't quite made up my mind.
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3.0 out of 5 stars
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