BaL 21.06.14 - Elgar's Cello Concerto

[Rue Dubac]

Rostropovich, with Haydn and Saint-Saens, LSO, Rozhdestvensky, BBC Legends, recorded 1965. No idea if still available.

[Pabmusic]

Whilst I share the reservations about this work of other contributors to this Thread*...
* = it's my least favourite of the Elgar works I love. (Read that sentence a couple of times - it makes sense: honest!)

Yes, the cello concerto is 'different', and not a particularly easy piece to get to know. I now link it firmly with the three chamber works (they are all almost exact contemporaries) rather than with any of the earlier orchestral works.

[mikealdren]

Du Pre,Barbirolli.
The sheer emotion and burning intensity just kills me.
If not the best,certainly up there in the top one.

Sadly for me, it's over the top. I prefer some noble restraint in Elgar, an intensity that is below the surface and somehow burns even hotter. It's a quality that Boult captured so often

Mike

[Beef Oven!]

Du Pre,Barbirolli.
The sheer emotion and burning intensity just kills me.
If not the best,certainly up there in the top one.

[Barbirollians]

I do not get the demand for reticence in Elgar . It seems to me that his life and times imposed reticence on his life not his music . As he famously said of the violin concerto that it was too emotional but I love it . Stiff upper lip Elgar just does not work for me . The Tortelier/Boult Elgar cello concerto being a striking example . It sounds like a serious overreaction to the du Pre/Barbirolli.

[mikealdren]

It's interesting how we can react differently to the same music and look for such different things in performance. That's one of the things that makes music so endlessly fascinating.

I've just listened to YoYo Ma's Elgar, the only version I have on CD and at too many points he doesn't seem to know what to do with the music. It has some very good moments but he keeps losing the plot!

Mike

[BBMmk2]

I have P[aul Watkins, Du Pre(c/w Sea PicturesLSO/Barbs.) and others.....

[Beef Oven!]

How do we pronounce Yo-Yo (Ma)? Is the emphasis on the first syllable, or the second, or is it without emphasis?

I am only confident in pronouncing English, Italian, Turkish and Greek names.

[Nick Armstrong]

How do we pronounce Yo-Yo (Ma)? Is the emphasis on the first syllable, or the second, or is it without emphasis?

He said "Hi I'm Yo-Yo" with four equal stresses, when I met him

So I guess that's your answer

[Beef Oven!]

He said "Hi I'm Yo-Yo" with four equal stresses, when I met him

So I guess that's your answer

Thanks. Why the whistle-face? are you pulling my leg?

[Nick Armstrong]

Thanks. Why the whistle-face? are you pulling my leg?

No was just trying to be nonchalant about a slightly shameless name-drop...

[Beef Oven!]

No was just trying to be nonchalant about a slightly shameless name-drop...

Yes, I think name-dropping is distasteful. I was saying the same thing to Camilla Parker Bowles, just the other day.

[Nick Armstrong]

Yes, I think name-dropping is distasteful. I was saying the same thing to Camilla Parker Bowles, just the other day.

He shoots, he scores!!

[Beef Oven!]

He shoots, he scores!!

Great assist, btw.

[frankwm]

The Navarra was already electronic-stereo in the PYE 1974 release (GSGC 15005) - previously it was GSGC 14057 in 1966 (with a mono GGC) - but that could've been an undeclared transcription as the coupling was the same - Enigma: true stereo.