News In this issue ... Page Page Address for Communications 2 Delius Society 14 Keep in touch 2 Birthplace Theft 15 Letter from the Chairman 2 Elgar Works 17 From the Editor 4 Looking Back 19 Annual General Meeting 2020 7 Letters to the Editor 22 Elgar Society Accounts 8 Branch Reports 25 Elgar Day at the Three Choirs 10 Branch Events 35 The Kingdom at the EIF 12 LSO Concerts at the Barbican 38 Membership Matters 13 Dates for your Diary 39 Crossword 50 No. 69 – December 2019 Address for Communications Contributions for the April 2020 edition of the Elgar Society News should be e–mailed, preferably as Word documents, to the Editor: Peter James: [email protected] Full contact details can be found on the back cover. The latest date for submissions for the April 2020 issue is 25 February 2020. Keep in Touch Remember: you can keep up to date with the latest Elgarian news online at Facebook: www.facebook.com Twitter: www.twitter.com London Branch Account: https://twitter.com/ElgarLondon YouTube: www.youtube.com or, search for ‘Elgar’ or ‘Elgar Society’ or ‘Elgar Birthplace’. Letter from the Chairman Although I am a citizen if not a son of ‘Auld Reekie’, I pen these lines, not without an entirely appropriate diffidence, with the beautiful Malvern Hills in view as inspiration (one hopes). Gill and I were delighted to discover that our visit to ‘Elgar Country’ coincided with the October meeting of the West Midlands Branch of our Society and we have just returned from a splendid concert given by the Elgar Chorale under their director Piers Maxim. In addition to meeting new fellow Elgarians, it was a pleasure to be so warmly greeted by Branch Chairman Dr John Harcup. I reminded him of the excellent lectures he had given to the Scottish Branch and it was good to see him again. 2 Elgar Society News Letter from the Chairman The musical season in Scotland may be said to commence with the Edinburgh Festival and for many of us a highlight this year was a performance, supported by the Elgar Society, of The Kingdom (reviewed by Tom Kelly on page 12). We were fortunate that Martyn Brabbins, such an understanding and sympathetic Elgarian, was conducting and it was gratifying to witness a large and enthusiastic audience (not always to be taken for granted at Festival events). Neil Mantle A highlight for the Mantles, at least, was an evening with past Chairman Andrew Neill and his wife Vicky. The ladies sat demonstrating a benevolent tolerance borne of long experience as anecdote after anecdote flowed as wine. Andrew and I discovered that some of our earliest Elgarian experiences centred around the same work: the Symphony No.2 in E flat, and at virtually the same time – 1964! Andrew’s was at a concert in Bristol where Sir Malcolm Sargent conducted the BBC Symphony Orchestra (preserved on a CD issued some years back). My own was rather more bizarre: as I was walking home from choir practice one Thursday night, something propped up against a dustbin – yes, a dustbin – caught my eye: the gold print of a chunky album illuminated by the streetlight. Upon closer examination the album bore the distinctly encouraging information: ELGAR Symphony No.2 in E flat, Op.63 The LONDON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Conducted by the Composer But would the fragile discs be broken, worn out or, worse still, incomplete? The fates were with me and all was well. Naturally, I ‘liberated’ this treasure trove, mentally thanking the anonymous donors for leaving the album out of the dustbin and not concealing it inside. Who knows, perhaps they had a premonition of some kind? Of course, I have those precious records still – 55 years later – and, yes, I do have a means of playing them! No. 69 – December 2019 3 Letter from the Chairman Our conversation then turned to the Boult Gerontius DVD and, whilst expressing gratitude that it had been ‘rescued’ technically, I felt a keen frustration at not being able to see Boult more on camera. Andrew told me that this was at Sir Adrian’s insistence. How entirely typical of that great man! When the camera finally allows us to see him, all too briefly, during the ‘Go forth upon thy journey, Christian soul!’ portion of the Prelude, it is an absolutely magnificent demonstration of legato stick technique; not to mention the way in which he builds to and away from the highpoint. In my view, all aspiring maestri should be shown this. The score beside me as I write is not that of the Second Symphony but the Third, which I am preparing for a performance in late November. We, by which I mean my wonderful orchestra the Scottish Sinfonia, gave the work in public when it was, so to speak, only a few months old, 21 years ago, and it is high time to give our audience the opportunity to experience it live again. Well, gentle reader, in the unlikely event that you have penetrated thus far in this homily, it may well be that you have concluded that investigation of further missives may safely be avoided – but if you do, you will miss reading of LSO horn players of the past and missed Elgarian opportunities... Neil Mantle From the Editor It’s appropriate to start this collection of miscellanea with a welcome to Neil Mantle, who was confirmed as our new Chairman at a Council meeting in October. As you will have gathered from reading his Letter on page 3, Neil is a committed advocate and enthusiast for Elgar – and he is able to support his advocacy with his own orchestra! At the same time we extend very best wishes for a speedy recovery to the Society’s new President, Sir Mark Elder, who underwent surgery in August to release a trapped nerve in his neck. Martyn Brabbins took over performances of The Kingdom in Edinburgh and The Apostles in London; and Sir Mark has also reluctantly had to withdraw from conducting Britten’s Death in Venice at the Royal Opera House. We look forward to seeing and hearing him back in action. 4 Elgar Society News From the Editor The most depressing thing you will read in this mailing has to be Meinhard Saremba’s editorial on page 3 of the Journal, in which he announces his resignation as Editor. He blames Brexit and what he perceives as a lack of ‘commitment for British culture in continental Europe’, developments that have cost our Society a distinguished collaborator and alienated a true friend. ________________ No doubt there are as many opinions on the best version of Elgar’s Symphony No.1 as there are recordings available. Composer and musicologist Geraint Lewis, writing in August’s Gramophone magazine, bravely – or perhaps recklessly – named his winners. Edward Gardner and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, recorded in 2016, were his ‘modern choice’; while ‘foreign choice’ was Roger Norrington’s ‘irresistible’ account with the Radio–Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart. (Robert Anderson took a rather different view of the latter when he reviewed it for the Elgar Society Journal in November 2000: ‘Sheer opulence, with headlong accelerando here and indulgent rallentando there, is not enough, and the Symphony’s drama has not been realised.’) Lewis’s ‘top choice’ was Sir Adrian Boult recorded at the 1976 BBC Proms: ‘an electrifying performance in which the orchestra play as if possessed’. Naturally, however, his verdict was soon challenged. It prompted letters to the Gramophone from two correspondents who both preferred Sir Colin Davis’s 1998 recording with the Staatskapelle Dresden, a version which has ‘all the right elements of power, pathos and grandeur’. Two people at least agreed on a preference… No. 69 – December 2019 5 From the Editor Restoration work continues at St Wulstan’s Church in Little Malvern, where the Elgars are buried. Repairs to the north side of the church are now needed, at a cost of about £30,000. As in previous years, Christmas cards are being sold to help raise the money. They are available at £4 per pack of ten from: www.christmascardsinaidofstwulstanschurch.com ________________ Occasionally some items of interest appear in social media. Professor Stephen Allen of Rider University in New Jersey took to the virtual pages of Facebook to expostulate on BBC Music Magazine’s ‘lazy trope’ that Elgar’s Cello Concerto was his last masterpiece. This judgement ‘has now been seriously questioned by my research1 on the Severn Suite,’ he wrote. The fact that Elgar thought the brass band original was worth being arranged for full orchestra, and for organ, constitutes ‘a ”triple threat” against any assertion that Elgar did not write any significant masterpiece in the final sixteen years of his life … [and] against assertions that he never completed a third symphony’. Bold claims: how many of us would rank the Severn Suite alongside the symphonies or the concertos? A so–called solution to the ‘Enigma’ also popped up on Facebook. In this theory the theme is played in the treble against a bass part taken from the second movement of Corelli’s Concerto Grosso, Op.6 No.8. Richard Westwood–Brookes was not impressed: ‘The theme came from Elgar randomly doodling on the piano … so how on earth can this be an intentional counterpoint to any other theme? … I do wish people would stop putting out these ever more preposterous “solutions”.’ Cue Leonard Bernstein: How does a composer write a piece, in England, before the turn of this century, every bar of which is traceable either to Brahms, Schumann, Tchaikovsky, Berlioz, Wagner – or somebody – and yet have every moment of it come out sounding (a) British and (b) like Elgar? That’s the enigma.