The first commercial recording of The Apostles was
that made by Sir Adrian Boult for EMI in 1974. This was a ‘follow-up’
to his magnificent set of The Kingdom made five years
before, when a stellar cast including Margaret Price and John
Shirley-Quirk had successfully proved that there was life in
the Elgar oratorios beyond Gerontius. Neither of these
artists was available for The Apostles, and although
the recording demonstrated that the score did not deserve the
derision already being accorded to it during the composer’s
lifetime, it did not achieve the overwhelming success of the
earlier release. Since then recordings of The Apostles
have continued to be thin on the ground: Richard Hickox did
it for Chandos, there has been a Discovery issue deriving from
a live performance in Canterbury Cathedral under Richard Cooke,
and now this recording made in Manchester under Sir Mark Elder
at a live performance - with patches from a rehearsal.
The Canterbury performance is one that one would be delighted
to encounter live, but the cathedral acoustic seriously blurs
the outlines of the score in a manner that cannot do full justice
to Elgar’s intricate and unique scoring; nor are the solo singers
on a par with their rivals. On the other hand Hickox, concerned
to project the drama of the score, tends towards extremes of
speed, sometimes slower than Elgar’s markings and sometimes
with a tendency to push the music forward to an undesirable
degree. Elder, with his plentiful operatic experience, recognises
that to take certain passages slower is not to lose dramatic
impetus and can indeed reinforce it. His superbly measured speed
for the chorus at the heart of In Caesarea Philippi
is a case in point. It should be noted that Boult’s pioneering
set is currently only available as an EMI reissue as part of
a boxed set.
The same cast and forces – mainly - as heard here under Elder
brought their reading to the Proms this year, but this commercial
release on the Hallé’s own label is certainly better. Although
Elder’s reputation in Elgar is deservedly growing, he is not
a traditional Elgarian. In a television documentary a few years
back he made it clear that his knowledge of the composer’s music
did not extend to the extraordinary but hardly unknown partsong
Owls. In the Proms performance he allowed the end of
the first movement of The Apostles, where Christ summons
the disciples and utters his first words, to run away at an
fantastically fast speed, for example. He did not make this
mistake in this Manchester performance, where Christ’s words
“Behold, I send you forth” are allowed to make their full effect.
In the Proms performance I was generally impressed with the
solo singing, but had reservations about Paul Groves as the
narrator and Saint John; his voice seemed strained and overly
forceful in a way that did not blend with the other singers.
There can be no such reservations here, where he phrases with
plenty of feeling and none of the strain evident in the Albert
Hall - perhaps the result of over-close BBC microphone placement.
The other singers here are all the equal of Boult’s and Hickox’s
soloists, or better. The soprano role of the Angel and the Virgin
did not ideally suit Sheila Armstrong for Boult - she seems
ill at ease and rather tremulous at times; Alison Hargan for
Hickox is preferable. Although Rebecca Evans is perhaps a little
too close for the ‘distant’ Angel specified by Elgar at her
first words, her voice has plenty of body where required and
more warmth. Her phrasing in her address to Mary Magdalene “Hearken,
O daughter” would melt the stoniest heart. As the Magdalene
Alice Coote has perhaps a little less contralto depth than Helen
Watts (for Boult) or Alfreda Hodgson (for Hickox), but on the
other hand she has plenty of character and rises superbly to
the higher notes. Paul Groves in this performance sounds more
forward than Robert Tear for Boult, but phrases with even greater
delicacy; David Rendall for Hickox is altogether more uninflected.
As Christ, John Carol Case for Boult and Stephen Roberts for
Hickox are slightly more withdrawn, more other-worldly than
Jacques Imbrailo here; but the latter also phrases with great
beauty and the sense of humanity surely is closer to Elgar’s
intention to portray the Biblical story realistically. Benjamin
Luxon for Boult is rather freer in the top register than David
Kempster here as Saint Peter, but there is little to choose
between them; the young Bryn Terfel for Hickox is best of all.
Elder scores most emphatically in his Judas. Clifford Grant,
a superb Hagen for Goodall in his English-language Ring
only a couple of years before, was beginning in the Boult recording
to show severe signs of wear on his voice with loosening of
vibrato and pitch which severely damaged his great scene of
repentance. Here Brindley Sherratt shows no such vocal problems,
and is even more expressive than Robert Lloyd for Hickox.
Boult’s recording was also seriously compromised by some rather
unfocused choral singing; here the Manchester singers are even
more superb than Hickox’s rather distantly recorded body - although
as a result the chorus of ‘singers within the Temple’ is undesirably
immediate. Elder has also gone back to Elgar’s own performance
practice and introduced a semi-chorus of nine voices (plus the
three soloists) to represent the twelve Apostles; this works
well throughout, and gives more point to passages such as the
opening of the Caesarea Philippi section. Elder’s conducting
is virtually ideal throughout. He is not afraid to dare to obey
the letter Elgar’s frequent instructions for Largamente
and his often extremely slow metronome markings, most notably
in the final Ascension section which gains implacable
momentum from the steady pace he adopts. Boult by comparison
can seem rather unfeelingly four-square at such points.
There are two quibbles, and the first is a very minor one. The
‘distant reeds’ at the beginning of section In the mountain,
Night are carefully marked by Elgar with a largamente
instruction over each of the semiquaver turns; the intention
is clearly to give a feeling of timelessness to the phrasing.
None of the recordings pay more than lip service to that direction.
The second quibble concerns the point when the priests interrupt
Judas’s phrase “I have betrayed the innocent …” with a loud
cry of “Selah!” Here Elgar marks Judas’s line pianissimo
and the priests are instructed to enter over the word
“innocent” with an fff entry. The intention is absolutely
clear: that the unfeeling chorus should ride roughshod over
Judas’s protestations. Here they wait politely until Judas has
finished his (unfinished) phrase before they interrupt him.
It is not what Elgar wrote, and it sounds unconvincing; neither
Boult nor Hickox miss the point here.
Otherwise I could detect no serious errors but there is, I suspect,
a bad misprint in the vocal score at the Judas’s words “shall
sit and rule upon his throne” (track 3, 2.50). The first syllable
of the word “throne” is shown as a G falling to D but the accompanying
bass line in the orchestra gives F-sharp falling to E. None
of the recordings give us the passage as printed. In Boult’s
performance Clifford Grant seems to alter the note to F-sharp
falling to D - although his pitching is not ideally clear here
- presumably with the conductor’s blessing. Here Brindley Sherratt
gives us a sustained F-sharp (as does Robert Lloyd for Hickox)
and this produces a momentary jolt as the bass line in the orchestra
falls away beneath him. In Canterbury the rather light-voiced
Robert Rice sings F-sharp falling to E, which parallels the
orchestral line and is surely the correct reading.
One other textual point. Michael Kennedy in his booklet note
states that Elder employs an authentic shofar for the ram’s
horn fanfares instead of the usual trumpet substitute. In fact
what we hear is so very well played that it might well be a
trumpet, whereas Boult’s player sounds more authentically ethnic.
This is hardly anything that needs to concern the listener overmuch.
This is quite simply the best performance ever of The Apostles
on disc. Those who enjoyed Elder’s Proms performance and BBC
broadcast will find their favourable impressions reinforced,
and indeed bettered. Those who found the Boult recording good
but not overwhelming will find this an answer to their prayers,
with soloists just as good and a much better chorus. Those who
like Hickox’s more impetuous approach may find some of Elder’s
slower speeds disconcerting, but will I think find that they
pay dramatic dividends in the long run. The quality of the recording
enables us to hear every detail superbly.
Paul Corfield Godfrey
See also review
by John Quinn RECORDING
OF THE MONTH August
Rebecca Evans (soprano); Alice Coote (mezzo); Paul Groves (tenor);
Jacques Imbrailo, David Kempster (baritones); Brindley Sherratt
(bass)