This is interesting, as it fills in an ‘interim” Elgar Violin Concerto, and a fine if technically flawed Cockaigne. In between is Toscanini’s take on some Elgar.
So first, the Overure Cockaigne (In London Town). The NBC Symphony is conducted by Malcolm Sargent – at the time of performance, he was not yet “Sir”. This is a 1941 recording, and while the sound is hardly perfect (and neither, sometimes, is the ensemble), this is a performance of great character. Cockaigne is one of Elgar’s most effervescent and atmospheric pieces, capturing the hustle and bustle of Edwardian London. Sargent persuades his NBC players to give their all: this is quite an unbuttoned performance, and all the better for it. “Sprightly” seem the mot juste:
A Englishman in America with an American orchestra; a nice reversal, if one is interested in Elgar interpretation over the years, is pcrhaps a Dutch conductor conducing an English orchestra: Eduard van Beinum and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, an original Decca release (Victor Olaf and Kenneth Wilkinson the excellent recording team) reminding us just how fabulous Decca recordings were at his time. This is an incredibly vivid performace – do listen to it. Also, a strange thought stuck me: in evoking London’s bustle there’s a moment that seems to stretch across time to Gershwin’s An American in Paris, where the composer imitates car horns:
So to the “Bandmaster”: one Arturo Toscanini. His NBC orchestra boasted the following section leaders (for Elgar writes for them): Mischa Mischakoff and Edwin Bachmann, violins, Carlton Cooley, viola, and Frank Miller, cello, Toscanini certainly bings intensity to this piece (even if the stings can occasionally sound somewhat scrawny). It does all sound rather hard-driven: Toscanini fans might lap it up, but this is not a performance o great depth, so when elation is the order of the day it is replaced by laudable discipline. It might be a neater performance the Sargent’s Cockaigne, but t is further away from Elgar himself:
SOMM is laudably hoest you the cup to the Elgar Violin Concerto in his “middle” Menuhin count: the first movement is uncut, the second and third both suffering’s though. So one has to factor this in: 14 burs in the second movement and 92 in the third (presumably broadcast reasons). Regarding the provenance and its place, the February 1945 account sits between Menuhin’s famous account its the composer of 1932, and his last 1966 London Symphony Orchesra and Boult traversal. It is true the recording struggles with the high first violins in the first movement tutti. But Sargent find some almost volcanic playing for the NBC-ers. This is very symphonic all-in-all, and Menuhin plays with real conviction to match:
The second move is again on a heightened symphonic scale: Sargent whips the orchestra into a frenzy at the slightest provocation; but Menuhin’s whisperings are a.fine counterbalance:
The finale is a fine account, impassioned from Menuhin. There is some coding to the recoding (as perhaps one might expect), but Menuhin’s grasp of the argument is a fine one, and the accompanied cadenza is particularly atmospheric; Elgar’s imaginative scoring certainly makes its mark:
An interesting supplement to the core Elgar discography,
The disc is available for Amazon here, although at the time of writing you may not believe it: it is mislabelled as Myaskovsky Symphony No. 6 under Kondrashin! But the body of the listing shows it’s the right one (it also came up using barcode).
