CHAN 9624 Front.qxd 18/10/07 11:10 am Page 1 Chan 9624 CHANDOS Elgar Sospiri Music for violin and piano Lydia Mordkovitch Lydia Mordkovitch violin Julian Milford piano CHAN 9624 Book.qxd 18/10/07 11:11 am Page 2 Edward Elgar (1857–1934) Sonata for Violin and Piano, Op. 82 25:05 in E minor . e-Moll . mi mineur 1 I Allegro 8:00 2 II Romance: Andante 8:04 3 III Allegro, non troppo 8:52 AKG written under the pseudonym of Gustav Francke 4 Offertoire, Op. 11 6:03 arr. F. Louis Schneider 5 Sursum corda, Op. 11 7:26 6 Salut d’amour, Op. 12 3:07 7 Mot d’amour, Op. 13 No. 1 2:44 8 Chanson de matin, Op. 15 No. 2 3:18 9 Chanson de nuit, Op. 15 No. 1 4:57 10 La capricieuse, Op. 17 4:54 Edward Elgar 11 Canto popolare 3:17 12 Sospiri, Op. 70 5:08 Adagio for Violin and Piano TT 66:52 Lydia Mordkovitch violin Julian Milford piano 2 3 CHAN 9624 Book.qxd 18/10/07 11:11 am Page 4 music carries a surprising weight of thought throws an interesting light on Elgar’s Edward Elgar: Music for Violin and Piano and feeling’. compositional personality and methods. The second movement of the sonata also Elgar wrote it into the piece on hearing of looks back, but this time to Elgar’s own the death of his old friend Marie Joshua, the Elgar’s music for violin and piano covers the wrote: ‘It is divine: simple thatched cottage music. Its graceful, yet mysteriously work’s proposed dedicatee. Thus the tune, in whole of his creative life. The violin was & a (soiled) studio with wonderful view…’ It fragmentary, opening recalls Elgar’s earlier a moment of beautiful nostalgia, brought Elgar’s own instrument; he began learning it was in this scene, one of isolated beauty in a ‘Spanish’ style, seen as if through a distant together the personalities of two of Elgar’s at the age of twelve, after hearing a vanishing world, that Elgar was inspired to mirror. This gives way to an expansive and closest female friends. The completed work performance of Handel’s Messiah in write his first music for a year, beginning his tender tune spanning fifty bars. Like most of finally bore the simple inscription ‘M.J. – Worcester Cathedral. As a young man, he sketches, appropriately, the day after the Elgar’s best music, this tune sprang very 1918’. was to make his living teaching the violin in August harvest. Appropriately, too, the music directly from his life; he wrote it immediately Of Elgar’s smaller pieces that we play on Worcester, and playing in ensembles such as was conservative even by Elgar’s own after hearing that his muse Lady Alice Stuart this disc, the first to be composed remains William Stockley’s Concert Orchestra in standards, and had a beauty that reflected the of Wortley, the ‘Windflower’ of the Violin the best known and loved: Salut d’amour, Birmingham. His first published work was a works he had loved in his youth. Concerto, had broken her leg in a painful Op. 12. The special warmth and tenderness Romance in E minor for violin and piano, The first movement of the Violin Sonata accident. Elgar himself described the of this lovely work are a reflection of a man brought out by Schott’s in 1884 as his looks back to Brahms in its knotty vigour. It movement as ‘fantastic, curious… with a very whose emotional life entered his pieces in a opus 1. The violin was also central in Elgar’s is a highly concentrated movement that expressive middle section: a melody for the peculiarly direct way. Elgar completed it in last rich musical harvest, the works of dispenses with a development section violin – they say it’s as good or better than July 1888, two months before becoming 1918–19. They culminate in the Cello altogether. All of its material is derived from anything I have done in the expressive engaged to his future wife, Alice Roberts. He Concerto, and otherwise comprise Elgar’s its first four defiant bars; even its yearning way…’. dedicated it to ‘Carice’, a pun on her two only published chamber music, the Piano second theme inverts the movement’s The last movement, in Elgar’s own words, given names, Caroline and Alice: ‘Carice’ was Quintet, the String Quartet, and the Violin opening. The form is strictly binary, and is ‘very broad and soothing’. Like the first also the name the couple were to give their Sonata, Op. 82. closes with a coda that proudly repeats the movement, much of its material is derived only child. For Elgar to have composed his The Violin Sonata, like the other two opening flourishes. This unusual concision is from its opening bars; however, it rarely Love’s greeting as a violin and piano work great chamber works of 1918, was largely matched by a textural ‘slenderness’ (Ernest touches the first movement’s emotional was highly appropriate; he had met Alice composed at Brinkwells, an isolated cottage Newman’s word) new in Elgar’s writing. As heights. The emotional climax of the when she had come to take lessons in piano in the East Sussex woods. Elgar’s devoted Newman wrote in 1919, after the Sonata’s movement is a restatement in the coda of the accompaniment from the local violin teacher! wife, increasingly aware of the need to premiere, ‘every superfluous line has been ‘big tune’ from the second movement. This If that was a secret message, it is possible to remove him from a modern life that horrified eliminated from the design, every moment, like the second-movement tune read another into the way in which a bright him, had found it the year before. Elgar superfluous note from the harmony; but the itself, has a connection to real events that E major opening (masculine?) is answered by 4 5 CHAN 9624 Book.qxd 18/10/07 11:11 am Page 6 the softer ‘feminine’ swell of the second both are subtitled ‘Andante religioso’, and the work of foreign composers. While this is Elgar. The moment of inspiration that led to subject. Schott’s bought the piece from Elgar both, curiously, share the opus number 11. entirely consistent with a strain of the Overture came during a visit to a ruined for a nominal sum and published it in 1889; Sursum corda ( ‘Lift up your hearts’) was resentment in Elgar’s character, I find this a temple, when a shepherd suddenly appeared the penurious Elgar had good cause to regret originally scored for brass, organ and strings slightly curious theory, since by 1903 Elgar like a figure from classical mythology. Elgar’s this, since the piece sold 3000 copies in to welcome the Duke of York to a special was a very famous man. Maybe the whole friend Rosa Burley, who was present, was January 1897 alone. service in Worcester Cathedral. This episode was simply an Elgarian joke, and later to say that the shepherd should have Mot d’amour, Op. 13 No. 1 was violin/piano version requires some defence, reflects his judgement on a piece which does had a pipe. Maybe the distant, rocking published by Orsborn and Tucker in 1890, since the arrangement, though contemporary, not belong among his finest. theme of ‘Canto popolare’, which Elgar liked together with a companion piece entitled is not by Elgar but by F. Louis Schneider. Chanson de nuit, Op. 15 No 1 was to pretend was not his own invention, was Bizarrerie. No doubt Elgar wished to follow However, the material of Sursum corda itself published in 1897, and swiftly rivalled Salut the innocent tune that the composer on from the enormous success of Salut comes from the fragments of a violin sonata d’amour in popularity. It is a beautiful slow imagined the shepherd piping. d’amour. Mot d’amour has all the intimacy of of 1887, and this arrangement enables us to nocturne with a classic Elgarian breadth, that Sospiri, Op. 70 is Elgar’s last short piece the earlier work, and is in a sense a guess how the slow movement of that eventually fades away in utter stillness. Its for violin and piano. It was written in 1914, complement to it, coming ‘after the marriage’ incomplete earlier work might have sounded. companion piece, Chanson de matin, and dedicated to Elgar’s close friend and (its dedication is to Caroline Alice Elgar). Actually, the slow lift and descent of the Op. 15 No. 2, was written later to admirer, the violinist W.H. Reed. It is However, it does not achieve quite the same main theme marks one of the first occasions complement it – which it does, perfectly. difficult to know for what medium Elgar melodic memorability; perhaps it relies a on which Elgar’s highly individual blend of There is nothing triumphalist about this initially conceived the piece; it was first little too heavily on the restatement of a striving and weary nostalgia within a broad aubade; the piece is a joyous morning performed at a patriotic Promenade concert single melodic idea. theme becomes apparent. awakening, but, like most of Elgar’s in London’s Queen’s Hall shortly after the La capricieuse, Op. 17 is Elgar’s only Offertoire is a curiosity; though written in miniatures, it is above all gentle and tender. beginning of the First World War, on which published violin and piano showpiece. Elgar 1893, it was not published until 1903, when Canto popolare is Elgar’s own occasion it was scored for strings, harp and composed it in 1891 after a visit to London it appeared under the pseudonym ‘Gustav arrangement of a section from his concert organ.