This comprehensive
collection of Elgar’s piano music has been out of the catalogue
for some time, and is now available in the Chandos ‘Classics’
price range. The programme includes unpublished or very little
known original pieces for the instrument, together with the
composer’s own arrangements for piano of five orchestral pieces,
including Dream Children and Carissima. Peter
Pettinger, who collectors might already know from his recordings
with Nigel Kennedy, performs the pieces in chronological order,
showing the gradual development and maturing of Elgar’s characteristic
style. In his booklet notes he outlines the preparation and
selection of the pieces presented, and indicates some of the
problems encountered when trying to discover the true versions
of pieces like the Serenade and Adieu, which have
been arranged for all kinds of instrumentations and orchestrations
since landing on the publisher’s desk.
Elgar never did
write a huge amount for solo piano, preferring the luxuriant
colours of the orchestra. The earliest pieces are of course
attractive music in their own right, but display a variety of
influences. Chantant was written when Elgar was 15, and
was unearthed from the British Library Department of Manuscripts,
and has something of a Nordic fresh-air feel to it. Pastourelle
could also be a dance by someone like Grieg or Smetana,
but Elgar’s facility with natural sounding melody is immediately
apparent. The first piece which has touches of distinctive individuality
is Rosemary, which has some of those harmonic leanings
and suspended melodic arches which make pieces like ‘Salut d’Amour’
so delicious. The miniature Griffinesque is an enigma,
with no explanation for its title or existence. Brevity is also
a feature of the Sonatina, which was written for an eight-year-old
niece of Elgar called May Grafton. The inclusion of the revised
published version later on in this disc is a little disorientating
among the later works, but the subtle differences make for some
interesting comparisons.
Skizze is a miniature, but significant in Elgar’s canon
of work. Jerrold Northrop Moore wrote of the piece that it is
“…a microcosm of the musical world with which the composer surrounded
The Apostles.” In a way, it heralds the real meat of
this programme. In Smyrna goes along with the longest
work by far, the Concert Allegro, as being his most important
piano compositions. Smyrna, now Izmir in Turkey, was a port
of call during a private cruise which Elgar made in the Mediterranean
in 1905, and the work has indeed a great sense of atmosphere
and exotic mystery. The Concert Allegro is the only work
for piano solo which Elgar wrote with the concert hall foremost
in mind, being written in short order for Fanny Davies’s St
James’s Hall recital on 2nd December 1901. The work
was subsequently shortened with the removal of a number of repetitions,
and there are suggestions on the manuscript that Elgar had plans
for a version with orchestra. The revised version is the one
presented here, and it has all of the drama and emotional force
which one would expect from the composer at the height of his
powers.
The final two works
have Elgar at his romantic best, Serenade having something
of ‘Salut d’Amour’ in its expressive lines, and Adieu from
the same year being a songlike piece, having a strangely narrative
feel in its arch-like form.
The piano sound on
this Chandos disc is lovely as you would expect, and the big acoustic
of St. Silas Church is not unattractive for Peter Pettinger’s
excellent pianism and musicianship. Given the salon nature of
much of this repertoire the vast sound can seem to add a slightly
misplaced grandeur to the programme, but once the ear has become
accustomed to it you soon find yourself concentrating more on
the fascinating gems on offer. We can be grateful to both Chandos
and Pettinger that so many rarely heard pieces are once again
available to fans of Elgar, British music, and piano repertoire
in general.
Dominy Clements
Peter Pettinger
(piano) 
