Edward ELGAR Symphony No. 1 • Falstaff

8.111256 bk ElgarSymp01_EU 11/28/08 2:00 PM Page 4 Edward Elgar conducts Edward Elgar 8.111256 Symphony No. 1 in A flat, Op. 55 46:28 Elgar conducts Elgar 1 Andante: nobilmente e semplice – Allegro 17:14 AAD 2 Allegro molto – 7:38 3 Adagio 10:16 4 Lento – Allegro 11:20 Recorded 20th – 22nd November, 1930 in Kingsway Hall, London Matrix nos.: Cc 20675-1, 20676-1, 20677-2, 20682-2, 20683-2, 20684-2, 20685-2, 20686-2, 20687-1, 20688-2 Edward and 20689-1 First issued on HMV D 1944 through 1949 ELGAR Falstaff – Symphonic Study in C minor, Op. 68 33:07 5 I. Falstaff and Prince Henry 8:56 6 II. Eastcheap – Gadshill – The Boar’s Head, revelry and sleep 7:02 Symphony No. 1 • Falstaff 7 Dream Interlude: ‘Jack Falstaff, now Sir John, a boy, and page to Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk’ 2:28 London Symphony Orchestra 8 III. Falstaff’s march – The return through Gloucestershire – The new king – The hurried ride to London 3:57 Edward Elgar 9 Interlude: Gloucestershire, Shallow’s orchard 2:26 0 IV. King Henry V’s progress – The repudiation of Falstaff, and his death 8:18 (Recorded 1930-1932) Recorded 11th and 12th November, 1931 and 4 February, 1932 in EMI Abbey Road Studio No. 1, London Matrix nos.: 2B 2011-1, 2012-2, 2013-2, 2014-1, 2017-1, 2018-1, 2019-1 and 2020-1 First issued on HMV DB 1621 through 1624 London Symphony Orchestra • Edward Elgar Producer and Audio Restoration Engineer: Mark Obert-Thorn Special thanks to Nathan Brown and Charles Niss for providing source material Producer’s Note The present transfers were made using the best portions of two 78 rpm pressing copies for each set. The CEDAR- 2 declicking module was employed both to eliminate pops and clicks as well as to tame the crackle inherent in the original British HMV shellac discs. Mark Obert-Thorn 8.111256 4 8.111256 bk ElgarSymp01_EU 11/28/08 2:00 PM Page 2 Edward Elgar (1857-1934) recurrence of the old self-doubts, creative blocks and a great an intellectual growth, so great a deepening of the retrenchment to tried and trusted compositional man’s whole nature, and so great a development of Symphony No. 1 • Falstaff, Op. 68 formulas. musical feeling and technique as are visible between The Symphony No.1 was the zenith of Elgar’s London’s Queen’s Hall with the London Symphony Composed in 1913, when artistic alienation had these two symphonies of Elgar. It is because he is now compositional career. It was also the major landmark of Orchestra just four days later, both conducted by bitten deep and hard, and with tensions fast approaching living on a psychological plane higher than any other the genre in the Great Britain of 1908, potentially Richter. breaking point on the world stage, the precisely English composers have ever touched that his Second retaining its position a full century later. Richter’s indelible statement about ‘the greatest designated Symphonic Study ‘Falstaff’ is the Symphony is beyond the popular grasp at the moment’. Notwithstanding the fingerprints of distinction stamped symphony of modern times, written by the greatest impeccably and brilliantly crafted smokescreen Just a few weeks after this he wrote of Falstaff: ‘The on the Enigma Variations nearly a decade earlier, in the modern composer, and not just in this country’ has masking its composer’s own disillusionment. In a style of the score shows us in many places quite a new realms of purely orchestral music and the symphony in resounded to the echo ever since, and the subsequent technically virtuosic depiction of Sir John from Elgar, and one that the public used to the older Elgar particular, for those weaned on homegrown Stanford excess of a hundred performances in the symphony’s Shakespeare’s history plays, not The Merry Wives of will not assimilate very easily’. and Parry, this work came as a lightning bolt. It first year of existence remains unprecedented. Two Windsor, Elgar returned to closely observed character When Elgar came to record and sometimes re- instantly consolidated Elgar’s reputation as one of statements made by Elgar himself are even more portraiture familiar from the Enigma Variations. This record a substantial portion of his output with the advent international stature, comparable to that of Richard noteworthy. The first about symphonic form in general time, however, the subject is fictional and allied to a of electric recording in the late 1920s and early 1930s, Strauss and openly acknowledged as such by the was given in a lecture at Birmingham University in more graphic series of adventures, interludes and he was returning to old works from the perspective of German composer himself. 1905 – ‘I hold that the symphony without a programme epilogue akin to that which befalls another disillusioned even more bitter experience of a much-changed world The acorn from which the symphony grew was is the highest development of art’; the second in a letter old knight, the Don Quixote of Richard Strauss’s tone and no major new works of his own since the Cello planted as far back as the 1890s when Elgar was to fellow composer Walford Davies specifically about poem of 1897. Significantly, the Don’s rejection and Concerto of 1919. Like all great, intuitive recording inspired by General Gordon, a paragon of military the First Symphony – ‘There is no programme beyond a withdrawal bask nostalgically in Strauss’s most rosy- producers, Fred Gaisberg knew when the time was ripe. prowess, limitless energy, firm resolve and staunch wide experience of human life with a great charity hued and wish-fulfilled comfort-zone. In total contrast, There really is no match for the composer’s insight and religious conviction – everything a composer could (love) and a massive hope in the future’. Here lie the Falstaff’s peremptory final dismissal comes with the instinctive way with his own work, especially when wish for in terms of heroic musical substance. Apart keys not only to the success of the First Symphony, but sharpest of public stings and bleakest abandonment. conducting the London Symphony Orchestra, of whom from a few sketches, however, nothing concrete was set also the subsequent catharsis of the première of the Every picture tells a story - the detailed analytical he had been principal conductor from 1911 to 1913. down, but after 1903 Elgar began confiding to his Second, which followed hot on its heels, compelled essay that Elgar wrote for the first performance and then Apart from some retouching early the next year, music editor, August Jaeger, that although the idea of a into existence in no small measure owing to the sanctioned for publication with the score does not tally this recording of Falstaff was set down at the symphony possessed him, he could not write it down. confidence engendered by the reception of its with his declared non-programmatic symphonic inauguration of HMV’s new Abbey Road Studios in A significant catalyst was his admiration and friendship predecessor. principle quoted above, nor does his declaration to November 1931 and there are no chinks in anyone’s for the great conductor Hans Richter, who despite all For all the perceived abstraction and objectivity of Landon Ronald, the dedicatee and conductor of the first armour, the composer’s protective mask is impermeable the traumas of the première of The Dream of Gerontius the composer’s notion of ‘a wide experience of human London performance of Falstaff, that the work is the and the work’s technical mastery thrillingly realized by in 1900 had salvaged matters in the face of huge life’, the First Symphony expresses this in a notably best thing he has done, ring with total conviction, the orchestra. Much the same can be said of the First adversity. Richter remained one of the composer’s more intense and personal manner than in any of his especially as, fortunately unsuspected by the composer Symphony, but come those special moments where the staunchest advocates, a musical epitome of Gordon, preceding works. Matched with vaulting progress of himself, Ronald admitted to being baffled by the piece. soul is laid bare, particularly the serene close of the and very specifically from an early stage the symphonic form, thematic development and orchestral An interesting meeting occurred with Eric Fenby, Adagio, it is lit by cool, undeniably beautiful objectivity unquestioned dedicatee of the symphony still cooking. technique, ‘masterpiece’ is writ large upon the score. Delius’s amanuensis, in the Langham Hotel in 1931 just rather than honest inner revelation – very similar to the Even then, nothing really substantive got underway The boost to his confidence encouraged by the success after the recording. Elgar’s attention was drawn by a stance adopted more generally by Richard Strauss when until 1908. With his large-scale oratorios The Apostles of this level of self-exposure in a major work led Elgar miniature score of his First Symphony in Fenby’s performing his own works. It would be interesting to and The Kingdom complete, Elgar’s inspiration down even more intimate and revelatory paths in its pocket. However he asked Fenby whether he knew know whether Elgar would have conducted these suddenly became unfettered from a set text and he went successor. The Second Symphony, however, baffled the Falstaff, which he did and indeed much admired. This passages in the same way twenty years earlier, when the at the symphony with a burning will and creative 1911 audience, demonstrating that any remnants of the immediately prompted a declaration from the composer work was new.

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