EDWARD ELGAR (1857-1934): From The Crown of India, Op. 66: March and Hail, Immemorial Ind!, The Wind at Dawn, The Empire March, A Voice in the Desert, Op. 77, Polonia, Op. 76, Piano Concerto (slow movement), Op. 90, The Spanish Lady Suite, Op. 89, Civic Fanfare (Hereford).
Catalogue Number: 04M054
Label: Scandinavian Classics
Reference: 220578
Format: CD
Price: $12.98
Description: At the time of its release over ten years ago, five of these pieces were world premiere recordings. Unlike the Third Symphony, only the slow movement of Elgar's unfinished piano concerto had enough orchestral indications in the score to be completed. Percy Young provided a verson for piano and strings in 1956 which was performed by Harriet Cohen; his version heard here adds winds and brass and dates from 1979 when Leslie Howard performed it. Young also worked up the seven-movement suite of music from Elgar's unfinished opera The Spanish Lady which contains five dances and two character sketches. The other recording premiere is of an 1888 song which Elgar orchestrated in 1912 and which was his first setting of his (then future) wife Alice's poetry - pre-Baxian Romantic sumptuousness. The other two items recorded here are occasional pieces from 1915 - A Voice, setting a translation of a Belgian poet for narrator and orchestra, and the tribute to partitioned Poland. Mette Christina Østergaard (mezzo), Peter Hall (narrator), Margaret Fingerhut (piano), Munich Symphony Orchestra; Douglas Bostock. Original 2000 Classico release (09C008).