Sir Edward ELGAR (1857-1934)
Elgar from America - Volume 3
The Dream of Gerontius, Op.38 [105.31]
Introduction and Allegro, Op.47 [14.25]
Scenes from the Saga of King Olaf, Op.30: The challenge of Thor: As torrents in summer [6.57]
Richard Lewis (tenor), Maureen Forrester (mezzo-soprano), Morley Meredith (baritone), Westminster Choir
Alexander Schreiner (organ), Mormon Tabernacle Choir/J Spencer Cornwall (Olaf)
New York Philharmonic Orchestra/Sir John Barbirolli (Gerontius, Introduction)
rec. Mormon Tabernacle, Salt Lake City, Utah, 1953 and 1 April 1956 (Olaf); Carnegie Hall, New York, USA, 3 January 1959 (Introduction), 25 January 1959 (Gerontius)
SOMM ARIADNE 5015-2 [69:50+ 58:03]
Sir John Barbirolli’s recordings of Elgar were among the brightest jewels in the HMV catalogues during the 1960s, and his disc of English string music including the Introduction and Allegro was one of the stalwarts of the recorded repertory for many decades. His Dream of Gerontius too was one of the pillars of every Elgarian’s collection. Who then, it might be argued, except the most ardent Barbirolli fan, would be interested in a set taken from a single live performance in 1961 with an orchestra unfamiliar both with the music and the conductor (only one-third of them would have remembered him from his period until 1943 when he was their principal) and where the mono sound cannot begin to compete with the sounds of HMV’s stereo engineers a few years later? Well, there are a number of reasons why this set might have a larger claim.
In the first place, when he came to record the title role for HMV in 1965, Richard Lewis as Gerontius was clearly unwell, suffering from a nagging infection; and although he struggled manfully with his condition, there was a decided sense of strain on high notes especially in his final outburst Take me away. In this live performance, remarkably the final one of four given on successive days to a New York audience totalling 12,000 listeners, he is in much fresher tone and his lyrical voice rings out over the orchestra with both abandon and richness. Secondly, Barbirolli’s EMI cast was undeniably marred by the inclusion of Kim Borg, whose bulky tone and heavily accented English accorded ill with the roles of the Priest (in Part One) and the Angel of the Agony (in Part Two); here the Canadian baritone Morley Meredith is immeasurably superior in both manner and effect.
Even elements in the HMV recording which constitute major advantages to that set are seriously challenged here. The young Janet Baker was thrilling as the Angel, including an enthralling top A just before Gerontius encounters his God. Here Maureen Forrester is darker and more maternal (and, like Helen Watts in the Boult recording, she adopts Elgar’s lower alternative in that climactic passage). But her subtle inflection of the text sometimes illuminates different insights than Baker; and from the moment when she encounters the Soul, this performance really achieves a sense of lift that Barbirolli failed to match in London four years later. The chorus of demons flies out of Hell at a ferocious pace, which hardly slackens until the sustained close at the end of the great choral outburst Most sure in all his ways. The sheer propulsion here rivals that which was regarded as so revolutionary in Britten’s recording of the work some years later again, but the same sense of excitement is anticipated by Barbirolli with a vengeance (except for one pardonable moment where a choral soprano lets out an involuntary near-scream on her entry on top B on the word “glory” just before the end of that huge outburst). Elsewhere the chorus are superlative, with beautiful shading on other high entries such as the A on Praise to the Holiest near the end or the high pianissimo on Go forth at the end of Part One. They were clearly impeccably trained in a work with which they must have been almost totally unfamiliar.
The recorded sound may not rise to the challenge of the EMI stereo to be heard on CD transfers, but the sense of presence in the Carnegie Hall acoustic is lifelike and not at all unpleasant despite the mono restriction of atmosphere. The internal balances are well judged (not at all easy in a work like this which relies so heavily on differences of perspective) with the organ excellently integrated into the orchestral sound and plenty of clarity in the most chamber-like elements of the Elgar’s scoring. The distant semi-chorus in the liturgical interjections in Part One are handled with great delicacy. This is a most valuable insight into the interpretation of The Dream of Gerontius by one of its great exponents – and indeed, in some ways it actually surpasses the EMI/Warner set.
The recording of the Introduction and Allegro, made a few weeks earlier, is rather less happy. The sound is sometimes congested, and the lack of stereo separation means that the intricate contrapuntal relationship between the distinguished solo quartet and the body of the strings is often less than ideally clear. The microphone placement that HMV engineers achieved in the Kingsway Hall with the handpicked players of the Sinfonia of London a couple of years later are infinitely superior. Nor is it possible to attach much value to the two rather odd excerpts from King Olaf recorded by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir in the early 1950s. We are used to hearing As torrents in summer given as an unaccompanied partsong (although, lacking the huge following choral climax in the original cantata, it always sounds unsatisfactorily incomplete to me); but the performance of The Challenge of Thor is an peculiarity indeed. The music itself, with its brutal challenge to the Christian God, is clearly relished by the choir; but the accompaniment is here assigned to a very churchy organ, which makes for an unbridgeable dichotomy of style that can only leave me wondering what on earth the conductor thought he was doing. The excerpt might have had novelty value in the 1950s (although in terms of purely choral writing The Wraith of Odin might have been a better choice) but, now that we have had the opportunity to hear the work on disc in full orchestral splendour, it sounds merely quaint today.
Never mind; these reservations are unimportant. What is important here is the opportunity to hear Barbirolli in full dramatic flight in a live performance of Gerontius, a work that clearly held a central importance for him, and in sound that is good enough to experience the performance in all its glory, as well as an excellent team of soloists that match those in his studio recording. The booklet contains an excellent and comprehensive note on Barbirolli’s New York career by Lani Spahr, who is also responsible for the remastering of the original tapes. There are no texts or translations provided, for which listeners are referred to various websites.
Paul Corfield Godfrey
