Elgar Complete Edition

[BBMmk2]

Wow!

I must find out more. So it could have been stolen.

I was thinking along those lines as well.

[Richard Tarleton]

More in today's Times - the Elgar Foundation has complained to Lord Hall that the programme should have allowed this woman to assert her ownership....Christies were concerned....it should be regarded as stolen property....

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Some 13 years after I started this threads, there have been quite a few new additions to this ongoing edition. Several have been mentioned already, the last being Coronation Ode.

Since then, we’ve had the one designated as Volume 1: The Black Knight/ The Banner of St George. It’s the only one I’ve been dissatisfied with, because of its formatting ( the print size of the music is minuscule.
Other recent additions are Volume 12 - Unaccompanied Sacred Music; Volume 20 - Wartime Recitations etc.; and most recently of all: Volume 35 - Music for Piano.

I was expecting the piano volume to be of little real interest, as piano music wasn’t really Elgar’s “thing”. Apart from the Concert Allegro, most of his piano output was from his early days, and Elgar was late developer musically speaking. However, I was pleasantly surprised by much of the content, as it includes orchestral reductions made by the composer, and there are also fully notated transcriptions of the Five Improvisations that Elgar recorded towards the end of his life.
I was so pleased with the piano volume that I ordered a second copy, so I could practise the music to my heart’s content without worrying about having one worn-out inclusion in my otherwise lovingly displayed Elgar library.

[Roger Webb]

Some 13 years after I started this threads, there have been quite a few new additions to this ongoing edition. Several have been mentioned already, the last being Coronation Ode.

......... Volume 35 - Music for Piano.

I was expecting the piano volume to be of little real interest, as piano music wasn’t really Elgar’s “thing”. Apart from the Concert Allegro, most of his piano output was from his early days, and Elgar was late developer musically speaking. However, I was pleasantly surprised by much of the content, as it includes orchestral reductions made by the composer, and there are also fully notated transcriptions of the Five Improvisations that Elgar recorded towards the end of his life.
...............

Is the 'Piano Concerto' included? I believe only the slow movt. in a short score for two pianos was actually completed by Elgar and given to Harriet Cohen, who used to play it in a version for piano and strings by Percy Hull. I think parts of the other movts. were taken from the Five Improvisations you mention by Robert Walker for the full performing version recorded on Dutton. If the two-piano score of the slow movement is the only movt. completed by Elgar, surely this would be in the piano volume.

[smittims]

Some of the shorter piano pieces are interesting, and indicative of what he might have done had the instrument interested him more. I'm thinking of Skizze, Griffinesque and In Smyrna. And Adieu is also a curious work. It's almost a paraphrase on Salut d'Amour and I think of it as his 'farewell' to Alice when he became involved wit Vera Hockman, who in turn, I think, is celebrated in 'XTC' which our old friend David Owen Norris incuded in a 2-CD set some years ago.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

The Piano Concerto sketches are due to be published in either Volume 42 or 43, along with sketches for the 3rd Symphony and others