Handley conducts Elgar: Vital broadcast recordings from Capital Radio, 1984

...there is no want of lustre in [Baker's] Sea Pictures: she is in rapturous voice, and the “live” dimension adds extra frisson. As for the First Symphony, Handley demonstrates his mastery at... — Financial Times, 26th June 2010, 4 out of 5 stars More…

Release Date: 1st Jun 2010
Catalogue No: LPO0046
Label: LPO
Length: 71 minutes

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Elgar: Sea Pictures, Op. 37

Work length23:43

Dame Janet Baker (contralto)
London Philharmonic Orchestra
Vernon Handley

I. Sea Slumber-Song

Track length4:59

II. In Haven (Capri)

Track length1:52

III. Sabbath Morning at Sea

Track length5:54

IV. Where Corals Lie

Track length4:19

V. The Swimmer

Track length6:39

Elgar: Symphony No. 1 in A flat major, Op. 55

Work length48:14

London Philharmonic Orchestra
Vernon Handley

I. Andante nobilmente e semplice - Allegro

Track length19:02

II. Allegro molto

Track length7:00

III. Adagio

Track length10:19

IV. Lento - Allegro

Track length11:53

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This release is a tribute to Vernon Handley's long and valued association with the London Philharmonic Orchestra extending back over 45 years.

A very special relationship exists with the music of Edward Elgar as the London Philharmonic Orchestra is often referred to as ‘Elgar’s Orchestra’. The LPO also had a special association with Vernon Handley and this release in a small way acknowledges Handley's contribution to the Orchestra's life. It marks the first re-issue onto a single disc of the acclaimed recording of Dame Janet Baker's Sea Pictures from a concert recorded by Capital Radio in 1984 and a landmark premiere release from the same concert of Elgar's Symphony No.1. When the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the Elgar Society were planning a concert to mark the 50th anniversary of Elgar’s death, Vernon Handley was the natural choice of conductor. Handley’s feeling for English music was second to none, and his rapport with Elgar’s music in particular is clear in these performances recorded live at the anniversary concert. Sea Pictures evokes contrasting images of the sea from ve poems sung here by Dame Janet Baker, a peerless interpreter of the work. Elgar’s first Symphony is one of Elgar’s finest works for orchestra – hailed after its première as ‘the greatest symphony of modern times’. Here in this recording Handley conducts a wonderfully paced reading of the Symphony and the LPO have performed and recorded this symphony countless times, rarely with more refinement and assurance than heard here for the first time in this live recording.

Includes scholarly CD notes by Elgar expert and past Chairman of the Elgar Society, Andrew Neill.

Reviews

26th June 2010

...there is no want of lustre in [Baker's] Sea Pictures: she is in rapturous voice, and the “live” dimension adds extra frisson. As for the First Symphony, Handley demonstrates his mastery at revealing myriad details while keeping a firm grasp of the work’s expansive architecture, and the LPO is on superlative form.

July/August 2010

[Handley has] a feeling for Elgar phrasing with the freedom and flexibility that can only come from long study and precise understanding. The symphony's essence is the progress of the 'great beautiful tune'...Handley never loses sight of this, letting it (or the kernel of four falling notes) emerge unemphatically but with meaning throughout.

9th May 2010

Handley’s heart, Elgar-attuned, is in the right place — as is his stick...his passionate account of this wonderful movement [the adagio] is very fine. And the work’s dramatic coda is superbly done. Janet Baker is in glorious voice in Sea Pictures.

20th May 2010

[Baker's] account of Sea Pictures is quite glorious, more rapturously beautiful and intense even than her famous EMI recording with John Barbirolli ...[Handley] projects a fiercely uncompromising view of Elgar [in the Symphony]...making the return of the opening march to crown the finale into a deeply ambiguous triumph.

9th May 2010

Vernon Handley's eloquent account of the First Symphony, restrained yet generously abandoned, is one to treasure. But the plum is Janet Baker's Sea Pictures...Her glorious, rich contralto voice, soaring and floating, is made for this music.

Handley conducts Elgar

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