Elgar
Enigma Variations
In the South (Alassio)
Serenade for Strings
Sir Andrew Davis, conductor
“...a reading clearly born of true affection for, and deep knowledge of this rich and ever-wonderful score … any Elgarian seeking these three pieces together will not remotely be disappointed.”
International Record Review
“… three fine interpretations, that also has the excitement of public performance, by a conductor who loves this repertoire and knows it like the back of his hand.”
BBC Music Magazine
“’A highly impressive recording.”
Classic FM Magazine, Best Classical Recordings of 2009
The Sunday Times, 14th June 2009 ***
This is an attractive Elgar anthology, representing three stages of the composer’s career: the work in which he first showed his true style (the Serenade), the work that made the crucial breakthrough (the Variations) and one from his greatest creative period (In the South), all in performances recorded live at the Fairfield Hall, in Croydon, and at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, on London’s South Bank. The Philharmonia is on sumptuous form, the full orchestra making a splendid sound in the richly scored In the South, and the woodwind, horn, violin, viola and cello relishing their solos. Davis’s reading of the Variations is full of good touches, with well-chosen tempi (Nimrod, if a shade slow for my taste, successfully avoids pomposity), and culminating in a finely paced and viscerally exciting finale.
David Cairns
The Guardian, 14th June 2009 ***
In 2007, Andrew Davis and the Philharmonia embarked on a nationwide tour to mark the 150th anniversary of Elgar's birth. These performances stem from those concerts: the Enigma Variations was recorded at Fairfield Hall in Croydon, and the other two works at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London. For those who attended any of the Elgar series, this will make a fine memento, as well as providing a reminder that Davis ranks among the finest Elgar interpreters. There's a comfortable ease about his Enigma, and a surging, expansive feeling about the concert overture In the South. ...
International Record Review
All three performances on this release stem from live concerts captured during the Philharmonia Orchestra’s special season in the first half of 2007 dedicated to Elgar on the 150th anniversary of his birth. The live feel is nicely retained: the Enigma and In the South have jubilant applause at the end (though the reflective conclusion to the Serenade is mercifully spared). Not only that: one of two other moments might under other conditions have been airbrushed out, a vigorous clunk at the start of In the South, for example, and a strange shriek in the same piece at 7’05” in - but no matter. We are also given a moment’s breathing space after ‘Nimrod’ and, quite audibly, the audience relax in their seats.
Another strange noise, this one entirely intended, comes in the mysterious *** variation that precedes the finale - the asterisks standing for one of two ‘friends pictured within’, either Lady Mary Lygon or Helen Weaver, depending on whom you believe. As is well known, either candidate was off on a sea voyage: hence the quotation from Mendelssohn’s ‘Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage’ in the same variation. Where Colin Davis and the LSO highlight that quotation, Andrew Davis, better than any other version I’ve heard, makes the passages preceding the quotation sound uncannily like the distant, faintly metallic thrum of a steamship engine - a fine imaginative touch, in a reading clearly born of true affection for, and deep knowledge of this rich and ever-wonderful score.
Both Davises know that one secret is to respect Elgar’s infinitely painstaking plethora of markings. In some ways their readings are chalk and cheese: Andrew, for instance, is particularly strong, where Colin slightly misfires in the grandiose finale. Colin gets more delicacy in ‘RBT’, and Andrew’s succeeding ‘RBT’ is not as light-footed as some. Yet his ‘Troyte’ is tremendous and another fast variation, ‘HSD-P’, is also superbly done - not exaggeratedly fast, which means the strings can articulate Elgar’s accents without skimping. I could go on: ‘Ysobel’ is almost chirpy, the viola solo not over prominent, ‘Nimrod’ superbly controlled and very moving in consequence...
The sound for the other two items, Queen Elizabeth Hall as against Fairfield Hall, is not quite as enhancing, but entirely acceptable, and you can sense that all concerned are playing their hearts out in In the South: the strings have a glorious sweep to them, the heavy brass are magnificent, and there is some wonderful solo work from the first clarinet, and the viola again for the ‘canto popolare’ section. There is tremendous physical excitement here; and of course Elgar’s peroration, which verges on the bombastic, asks for just that kind of all-out commitment.
After it, the Serenade comes as balm. Davis gets a nice swing to his step in the first movement, and I like the almost dance-like feel. The heart-stopping central elegy is a little more forthrightly projected than, say, Barbirolli’s. I was going to say that the Philharmonia strings are maybe quite weighty for this piece, but then, I doubt that Barbirolli’s were fewer in number, and no one, not even the present version, has ever come close to that matchless disc. Still, any Elgarian seeking these three pieces together will not remotely be disappointed.
Piers Burton-Page
BBC Music Magazine Performance ****, Recording *****
These three live performances from 2007 further burnish Andrew Davis’s credentials as an Elgar conductor. One feature of the recording is the unusual strength of the bass, adding richness and weight to the lower lines and making one more aware of Elgar’s contrapuntal mastery. While it also makes parts of the Enigma Variations sound a little too comfortable, too cushioned, it also helps to bring out the really bravura timpani playing in ‘G.R.S.’ (the ‘bulldog Dan’ variation). Moreover Davis achieves a ‘Nimrod’ of great warmth and dignity, then later a wanly desolate seascape in the Variation 13 ‘Romanza’, and a finale of tremendous cumulative power. The In the South is bold, if a mite beefy, and Davis is not as successful as some conductors (Boult, say, or Solti) in concealing the work’s essentially episodic construction.
In the matter of the Enigma, competition is legion and strong. One of the other benchmarks is Andrew Davis’s own, earlier version for Warner, with the BBC Symphony, which is a superb interpretation with demonstration-class sound. Excellent though the new account is, I don’t think it quite comes up to that same standard. The disc is, however, safely recommendable as a crop of three fine interpretations, that also has the excitement of public performance, by a conductor who loves this repertoire and knows it like the back of his hand.
Classic FM Magazine, Best Classical Recordings of 2009
’The splendour in the Philharmonia’s playing is genuinely as close to Berlin Philharmonic standards as makes no difference’ wrote our reviewer. A highly impressive recording.
The Gramophone, Awards 2009
If one includes the BBC/Opus Arte DVD of his 2004 drama-documentary with the BBC SO, this is, by my reckoning, Sir Andrew Davis’s fifth Enigma on disc (and his third with the Philharmonia). Captured on the wing at Croydon’s Fairfield Hall during Davis’s sesquicentennial Elgar series from the spring of 2007, it is also, on balance, his most compelling and characterful yet, evincing an eager application, easy flow and unforced wisdom that stem from long familiarity with the score. There are highlights aplenty: both “Troyte” and “GRS” bound along with a trim swagger, while Davis’s “Nimrod” comes close to the ideal in its humane, selfless glow. Best of all, perhaps, is “EDU”, an infectiously unbuttoned and finely placed culmination, with the organ adding a splendidly grandiloquent opulence to the coda. However, the stand-out offering here has to be In the South, which enshrines as personable, generously pliable and lucidly integrated a conception as I can ever recall. Like Elder on his superb Halle account (7/03), Davis invests Elgar’s arching melody lines with heartwarming lyrical fervour. What’s more, the (uncredited) principal viola extracts every ounce of wistfulness from the sultry “Canto poplare” at the work’s evocative heart. Both In the South and the Serenade (the latter having already appeared as a coupling for James Ehnes’s 2008 Gramophone Award-winning account of the Violin Concerto - Onyx, 1/08) were not recorded in London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall - not an ideally spacious acoustic, you’d have thought, but in fact there’s little to quibble with sonically.
Andrew Achenbach
BBC Music Magazine, July 2010
From comparative review of Symphony 1 recordings
There are still those who find Sir Andrew Davis just a touch safe, bur he's lived with this music for decades, so give me this security and handsome blend any day over the brute force of his elder counterpart (and no relation) Sir Colin's performance with the Staatskapelle Dresden. The conflicts are unusually light and springy. I also hear more of Elgar's dynamic injunctions realised here than in any other version - especially the return of the first movement's disquiet over a second, louder stalking theme in the bass - and real pianissimos in the most refined of all Adagios. Handsome Philharmonia strings are one decisive gain over their slightly scrawny BBC Symphony counterparts in Sir Andrew's first recording.
