Edward Elgar - Orchestral Songs (Various Artists)

Information

Composer: Edward Elgar

CD1: Orchestral Songs

1. Song Cycle, Op. 59: Oh, soft was the song (No. 3)
2. Song Cycle, Op. 59: Was it some golden star? (No. 5)
3. Song Cycle, Op. 59: Twilight (No. 6)
4. The Wind at Dawn
5. The Pipes of Pan
6. Two Songs, Op. 60: The Torch (No. 1)
7. Two Songs, Op. 60: The River (No. 2)
8. Pleading, Op. 48
9. Follow the Colours: Marching Song for Soldiers
10. The King's Way
11. Incidental Music to Grania & Diarmid: Incidental Music
12. Incidental Music to Grania & Diarmid: Funeral March
13. Incidental Music to Grania & Diarmid: Song: There are seven that pull the thread

Kathryn Rudge, mezzo-soprano

Henk Neven, baritone

BBC Concert Orchestra

Barry Wordsworth, conductor

CD2: Elgar Society Bonus CD

1. Like to the Damask Rose
2. The Shepherd's Song
3. Dry those fair, those crystal eyes
4. The Mill Wheel: Winter
5. Muleteers' Song
6. As I laye a-thynkynge
7. Queen Mary's Song
8. The Torch
9. The River
10. In the Dawn
11. Speak, Music

Nathalie de Montmollin, soprano

Barry Collett, piano

Date: 2018

Label: SOMM Recordings

https://somm-recordings.com/recording/the-hills-of-dreamland-elgar-orchestral-songs/

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Review

Only last January I was heaping praise upon Roderick Williams’s distinguished advocacy of Elgar’s orchestral songs (Chandos, coupled with Andrew Davis’s terrific BBC PO Falstaff), and now Somm offers us an even more comprehensive overview of this same repertoire. Duties are shared between the Dutch baritone Henk Neven and mezzo-soprano Kathryn Rudge (former BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists, both), and they are excellently supported in turn by Barry Wordsworth and the BBC Concert Orchestra. Liverpool-born Rudge is in refulgent voice for the darkly passionate Op 60 diptych of 1910 (featuring texts by Pietro d’Alba – Elgar’s own pseudonym, this, and a sly reference to his daughter Carice’s white angora pet rabbit!), while it’s hard to imagine more sheerly beguiling renderings of either ‘The Wind at Dawn’ (1888) or ‘Pleading’ (a wistful setting from 1908 of a poem by Arthur Salmon). If, in the three Op 59 songs, Neven doesn’t eclipse Roderick Williams in terms of imaginative flair or idiomatic word-pointing (the haunting ‘Twilight’ being a case in point), his remains a most pleasing contribution; certainly, he gives a splendidly lusty account of ‘The Pipes of Pan’.

Elsewhere, Neven and Wordsworth make out an unexpectedly convincing case for the patriotic ‘Follow the Colours’ – originally requested by Novello in 1908 and first heard at the Royal Albert Hall’s Empire Day concert under the title of ‘Marching Song’ – but not even Rudge can redeem ‘The King’s Way’, a vehicle for the contralto Clara Butt to words of dubious quality by Alice Elgar and the trio melody from the Pomp and Circumstance March No 4 celebrating the formal opening of ‘the newest street in London town’. Last, but definitely not least, comes Elgar’s wonderful 1901 incidental music for Grania and Diarmid: Rudge proves a deeply eloquent exponent of ‘There are seven that pull the thread’, and Wordsworth secures some ideally atmospheric playing both here and in the magnificent ‘Funeral March’.

At no extra cost, Somm throws in an intriguing programme of solo songs excellently recorded for the Elgar Society by Paul Arden-Taylor at Southampton’s Turner Sims. Rarities include ‘The Mill Wheel: Winter’ (1892) and ‘Muleteer’s Song’ (1894, to verses from Cervantes’s Don Quixote); Elgar subsequently reworked both for his 1896 cantata King Olaf, though in the event only the former made it into the published version (in the section entitled ‘The Death of Olaf’, to be precise). The Swiss soprano Nathalie de Montmollin receives stylish support from pianist Barry Collett (who also provides usefully detailed booklet notes), but her tone and vibrato are not the most ingratiating, and there are also occasional tuning issues to contend with. No matter, for the main contents alone, this is a release which has already afforded me much pleasure.

-- Andrew Achenbach, Gramophone

More reviews:
https://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2018/Sep/Elgar_hills_SOMMCD271.htm

https://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2018/Sep/Elgar_hills_SOMMCD271_EJW.htm

https://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2018/Oct/Elgar_hills_SOMMCD271.htm

https://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2019/Feb/Elgar_hills_SOMMCD271.htm

https://www.classical-music.com/reviews/choral-song/various-works-by-elgar

https://www.amazon.com/Elgar-Dreamland-Orchestral-Complete-Incidental/dp/B07FSTVTQ1

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Edward Elgar (2 June 1857 – 23 February 1934) was an English composer, whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are orchestral works including the Enigma Variations, the Pomp and Circumstance Marches, concertos for violin and cello, and two symphonies. He also composed choral works, including The Dream of Gerontius, chamber music and songs. Elgar has been described as the first composer to take the gramophone seriously. Between 1914 and 1925, he conducted a series of acoustic recordings of his own works.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Elgar

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Mezzo-soprano Kathryn Rudge was born in Liverpool in 1986. She was a BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist (2015-17) and is an Associate Member of the Royal Northern College of Music where she studied voice with Susan Roper (2004-11). Rudge made her operatic debut as Cherubino in Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro (English National Opera 2012) and has since performed in many principal opera roles. She made her BBC Proms debut in 2016 and has performed as soloist with all of the BBC Orchestras. Her discography can be found on Onyx, Chandos, SOMM, Hyperion, Champs Hill and Nimbus labels.

https://kathrynrudge.com/

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Dutch bass-baritone Henk Neven (born 1976 in Rotterdam) is one of the most exciting song interpreters of his generation, having made regular appearances at the Wigmore Hall, Concertgebouw and the BBC Proms, whilst being equally at home on the operatic stage. A recipient of the Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship, he has an ongoing recording contract with Onyx and his discs have received critical praise. Neven was a member of the prestigious BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists Scheme and in 2011 received the Dutch Music Prize, the highest honour that the Netherlands Ministry of Culture awards to a classical musician.

https://henkneven.com/

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