Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Essential Elgar, 25 Nov 2005
The Cd's title is erroneous. The Elgar Violin Sonata, one of a trio of chamber works Elgar completed after the First World War is the main item on this disc. Recorded before Nigel Kennedy chopped his hair off and started wearing John Richmond, the the haunting, twilight world of the sonata, the reflections, the aching nostalgia is captured to perfection.
Its a hugely insightful performance showing us what a fabulous musician Kennedy is. Its a gutsier, harder, more youthful performance than the classic Albert Sammons recording but I can't help but think Elgar would have been bowled over with his playing. This music seems to look back wistfully to happier times but doesn't need sentiment. Kennedy understands this (better than in his performances of the concerto I feel).
The fillers are an absolute delight. Elgar wrote wonderful miniatures that were in many great player's repertoire. Chanson de Nuit is played so beautifully by Kennedy, the odd hesitation here, subtle shifts in tone, suspense of vibrato for a moment, techniques that he has so employed in other classical recordings and of course in his work with jazz.
The sound of the disc is bright and atmospheric, early digital at work. Kennedy's pianist Peter Pettinger is sensitive and very sympathetic, though the piano tone is a touch forward.
For music lovers looking to explore lesser know works of Elgar, then this CD is compulsory. And then you need to get the Elgar Piano Quintet recording with the Allegri and John Ogdon!
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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
NOSTALGIA IS NOT WHAT IT WAS, 19 Dec 2003
A word in favour of this disc might not be out of place. It falls into two distinct parts, the violin sonata on the one hand and the ragbag of smaller pieces on the other. What ‘understanding’ of Elgar I can lay claim to is not something I should try to assess, but his music has a powerful appeal for me and, for what it’s worth, I have been trying all my life to get a deeper appreciation of his very unstraightforward personality. Elgar was rarely at peace with himself or with the world. I find in his music a mixture of nobility and neurosis which gives him an unlikely affinity with Mahler to that extent. The violin sonata is one of the three late and very personal pieces of chamber music that he produced, along with the string quartet and the piano quintet, the same ‘trio’ of works that Franck turned out for the chamber repertory. It does not seem to me quite the equal of the other two, particularly the quintet, but it is a major effort all the same. Behind the lyricism it’s not hard to detect the inner unease and melancholy, and the trick his interpreters have to turn is to be sensitive and responsive to the unpredictable twists of the composer’s moods. The struggle must not be ironed out, but it must not overwhelm the contemplative element either, and to my ears Kennedy makes a very good show of it indeed. There is a deep frustration in the piece, something beating at the walls and door to be let out and then abandoning the effort, and I caught that sense quite strongly in this reading. The smaller pieces are Elgar letting his sentimental side out without complications. Elgar died in 1934, but in the late 40’s and the 50’s the kind of tea-houses still flourished that were the natural home of music like this. In my own native city I recall Miss Cranston’s and Miss Buick’s – children were required to be especially on their best behaviour as the tea was served with buttered toast, doughy scones and nondescript little cakes arranged on odd little multi-deck tables. In the background there were hard-up-looking musicians playing tasteful airs, and I would be surprised if I did not make my first acquaintance with Salut d’Amour and Sospiri in one of these now-forgotten establishments. This disc does not so much lead me down memory lane as drag me down it forcibly. I mean this in the very best sense – the forcefulness is in the recollections, not some inappropriate emphasis in the playing. Kennedy is recorded rather close-to, but I can live with that. Peter Pettinger seems admirable to me throughout. I heard him in person many years ago, and remember him largely for chewing gum as he played, but I have not been aware of him in a long time. Steven Isserlis is well known of course, and provides a fine soulful partnership to Kennedy in Salut d’Amour. As billed here, this serves as the title of the disc, gloriously misprinted as Salt d’Amour which I hope they never change. The recorded sound is really very good, and you will have gathered that this is a record that has quite a lot to say to me. For all I know this may be a minority opinion, but actually I should be surprised if these accounts are not thoroughly attractive to many. The era they recall is not one I greatly regret, but distance still lends enchantment to the view.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This is eloquent, 23 Jul 2008
This CD gleams like a hard clear gem with the dark light of memory and loss. It is entirely unsentimental and speaks volumes to the heart of what I imagine it might feel like to be English -- not in Edwardian England or after the First World War, but in the 21st Century.
I have lived in the UK long enough to remember an England that has long passed -- of bustling yet friendly village post offices and cozy and slightly tatty tea shops, smiling and buxom elderly ladies in aprons, and warm and genuine pride in labour and industry. It is not so much these images that fill the music but a powerful sense of their irretrievable loss -- and the loss of so much more besides. I used to listen to this CD on Sunday afternoons in Oxford as an American undergraduate. I'd always end up with tears in my eyes.
Whether you are English or not, this is a recording to cherish. It's made of the stuff that keeps us alive, feeling, remembering, responding. And it's completely unsentimental.
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![Antonio Vivaldi: The Four Seasons [Complete]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41K5JF22QPL._SL500_SS90_.jpg)
~ Antonio Vivaldi
~ Edward Elgar
~ Ludwig van Beethoven
~ Nigel Kennedy
~ Daniel Barenboim
