The generally warm welcome given to the reissue of these semi-forgotten
recordings has included some reservations over the slowish tempi
for “In the South”. I should like to start, though, with “Enigma”,
since this is a much-recorded work in which we are used to hearing
a wide range of interpretations.
After
noting the finely-shaded, expressive string-playing in the
first part of the theme, we find that, with the change to
the major, Weldon makes no attempt to move the music onwards.
The wind phrasing is full and it is the precisely observed
crescendos and diminuendos that prevent the music from stagnating.
The first variation, too, concentrates on breadth. When the
first of the faster variations comes we note – and this is
a feature of all the faster music – that, while Weldon is
not exactly slow, he takes as his basis a tempo in which the
notes can all be played with brilliantly clear articulation.
In the gentler variations, on the other hand, he insists on
warm tone and expressive phrasing even if this means that
pianos are slightly marked up to mezzo-pianos.
All
this adds up to a rather different style from the two major
Elgar interpreters of those days, Boult and Barbirolli. The
former had relaxed somewhat since his astonishingly driven,
Toscanini-like pre-war recording, but his was still a volatile
“Enigma” at least until the 1960s, the swift variations letting
fly even at the expense of clear articulation, while at the
other extreme he had an extraordinary ability to achieve rapt
sotto voce playing from the strings while maintaining
relatively flowing tempi. Yet Weldon seems equally distant
from Barbirolli, apart from the fact that the latter’s Pye
recording of “Enigma” shows that in those days he still favoured
a surprisingly brusque manner. There is no risk of narcissism
in Weldon’s slower tempi, or of self-indulgence. Rather, he
has the melodies sung nobly from the heart, always warm, never
fussy. Had he had more time, I suggest Weldon would have established
a third interpretative way, one to stand alongside Boult and
Barbirolli and with a more definite profile of his own than
Sargent. The finale is perhaps the best illustration of his
methods. It does not surge hedonistically, but nor does it
become mired in patriotic pomp. It is, quite simply, noble.
Enjoyment
of this is immensely helped by a recording that is astonishingly
good for its date. This is all the more notable when not all
that long ago I was listening to Beulah’s transfer of the
Sargent recording set down the same year in the same venue
and found that the sound quality definitely prevented full
appreciation of the performance. However, Beulah were working
– so far as I know – from LP copies, while Somm have been
allowed to re-master the original EMI tapes. Furthermore,
this has been done “as a tribute to a remarkable conductor
and a fine friend” by Brian B. Culverhouse, the original producer
of many of Weldon’s recordings, including the other works
here – “Enigma” was Walter Legge production. Maybe an equally
fine job will be done on the Sargent one day.
Having
taken stock of Weldon as an Elgar interpreter we can turn
to his “In the South”, which is about three-and-a-half minutes
longer than the Boult performances available. The opening
has grandeur rather than elation but, as is becoming clear,
this is how Weldon sees Elgar. At first I missed the surge
of the best Boult, both here and in the ensuing lyrical music,
but I came to appreciate Weldon’s sheer warmth. The Roman
legions passage is extraordinary, its grinding slowness and
pitiless power carrying Mahlerian weight, even a suggestion
of Shostakovich. Whereas the moonlight serenade, true to form,
is expressed with heartfelt warmth rather than Boult’s hushed
tenderness. I have a particular love of Boult’s final recording
– and I continue to find the famous Silvestri brash and over-drilled
– but Weldon seems to me a wholly valid alternative.
Gladys
Ripley was famously the contralto soloist in the first Sargent
“Gerontius”. Nine years later I find her throbbing vibrato
detracts from her basic steadiness. Compared with Janet Baker
– a cruel thing to do but the Baker record exists – her voice
seems a big but blunt instrument. I don’t remember finding
such problems with her Angel in “Gerontius” – but I don’t
have it to hand for comparison – and I wonder if her voice
production had slipped backwards in the intervening period.
Janet Baker seems to produce so much more with a lot less
effort. Also, while Ripley enunciates her words clearly, she
does not produce any of those memorable colourings with which
a great singer wraps music and words around our hearts. It
is possible to find the Baker/Barbirolli version excessively
lugubrious, but any alternative would have to be sung at least
as well. While not disliking Ripley, I got more enjoyment
from Weldon’s handling of the orchestra.
Those
same commentators who found “In the South” on the slow side welcomed
“Sea Pictures” as a refreshing return to basics compared with
the “indulgent” Baker/Barbirolli. Oddly enough, the timings –
checked in my computer – reveal that in three out of five songs
Baker/Barbirolli are fractionally faster.
|
|
I
|
II
|
III
|
IV
|
V
|
|
Baker/Barbirolli
|
05:02
|
02:06
|
06:20
|
04:11
|
06:03
|
|
Ripley/Weldon
|
05:07
|
01:43
|
06:46
|
03:20
|
06:00
|
It
can only be supposed that Barbirolli’s espressivo style
can seem slower than it is, while Weldon’s nobilmente manner
leads the ear onwards and seems quicker.
The
interesting difference is in the fourth song, “Where corals
lie”. Here I side with Baker/Barbirolli. While Ripley/Weldon
expand sumptuously where Elgar marks allargando the
basic tempo is rather bright and perky, more like Coleridge-Taylor
than Elgar. Baker/Barbirolli find a stillness and mystery
which gives the music an added dimension. It may be that the
Ripley/Weldon tempo was “traditional”, but in reality Elgar’s
marked tempo of crotchet = 56 is slower still. If observed
– and it would require remarkable breath-control for the long
phrases not to be broken up – the song would have a gravity
that Baker/Barbirolli’s crotchet = c.66 at least hints at.
Ripley/Weldon at around crotchet = 80 are getting on for double
the marked tempo. Even if some sort of tradition had grown
up for doing it this way, can the marked tempo really be that
wrong?
In
spite of some reservations over “Sea Pictures” this disc gives
us an important glimpse of a conductor who was possibly on
course to become a major Elgar interpreter, though without
more recorded evidence – no symphonies or “Gerontius” – we
are rather left guessing. His LP collection of lighter works
– “Cockaigne”, the two most popular Pomp and Circumstance
Marches, the Serenade and the “Chansons” – was once highly
regarded (World Record Club T/ST296) and might fill out the
picture a little. Added value comes with Christopher Morley’s
résumé of the conductor’s career and notes on the music, and
Brian B. Culverhouse’s affectionate memoir. Only the cover
photo puzzles me. Morley begins with the following portrait:
A cigarette clamped permanently to his lower lip, and with
his penchant for sleek fast cars, George Weldon had something
of a glamour-boy image, and his fan-club of adoring women
was huge.
The
man in the photo looks like a crusty prep-school Latin master
around retiring age – maybe even Mr. Chips himself. Young
ladies of the 21st Century are unlikely to buy
the disc on the strength of this.
Christopher
Howell
see
also Review
by Rob Barnett and Ewen
McCormick
Gladys Ripley
(contralto) (2) 
