Great Elgar recordings

[smittims]

Well, oliver, Fred Gaisberg tried for many years to get Kreisler to record the Elgar concerto, receiving many excuses, and eventually giving up and asking the young Menuhin , and the rest,they say, is history.

Kreisler played the concerto quite a bit at first, but I guess not after 1914 when of course, he and Elgar were on opposite sides of the barbed wire. . After the war I think he had gone off it, didn't want to work it up again and , maybe long before his public and the critics guessed, felt his powers were waning. I think it's significant that he didn't record any of Elgar's violin music, not even the pretty salon pieces which one would have expected to attract him.

He was a generous, kindly man and grateful for Elgar's concerto enough to play it , but (without being cynical) I think he was aware that Elgar's zenith with the public had passed after the war. I don't think he took on any other 'new' music after that.

[Barbirollians]

Well, oliver, Fred Gaisberg tried for many years to get Kreisler to record the Elgar concerto, receiving many excuses, and eventually giving up and asking the young Menuhin , and the rest,they say, is history.

Kreisler played the concerto quite a bit at first, but I guess not after 1914 when of course, he and Elgar were on opposite sides of the barbed wire. . After the war I think he had gone off it, didn't want to work it up again and , maybe long before his public and the critics guessed, felt his powers were waning. I think it's significant that he didn't record any of Elgar's violin music, not even the pretty salon pieces which one would have expected to attract him.

He was a generous, kindly man and grateful for Elgar's concerto enough to play it , but (without being cynical) I think he was aware that Elgar's zenith with the public had passed after the war. I don't think he took on any other 'new' music after that.

I recall a highly spurious suggestion in a sleeve note that Barbirolli refused to accompany anyone in a recording of the concerto as Kreisler had not made a recording . As Smittims says Gaisberg tried and tried but FK could not be persuaded .

Regrettably, the same attitude continues especially amongst European violinists - consider Anne Sophie Mutter - as much as I admire her she won’t play the Elgar but will play Hollywood pulp music by John Williams.