Elgar, Enigma Variations (Hyperion, through Ode Records)
Elgar, Enigma Variations (Hyperion, through Ode Records)
Elgar's Enigma Variations is a sublime piece of musical portraiture, developing the enigmatic melody that gives the work its title into 13 sketches of the composer's friends, signed off with a robust self-portrait.
Martyn Brabbins and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra make a fine gallery of it on this newHyperion CD, capitalising on their long association recording British music of the last century.
The Scottish players are wonderfully responsive to their conductor's flair with characterisation. Troyte in Variation 7 bolts and blusters like a runaway Tchaikovsky trepak; before it, the wayward viola playing of Elgar's friend Isobel Fitton floats in its own beautifully evanescent idyll.
While many recordings couple these Variations with one of Elgar's concertos, this one turns to curiosities, apart from a bracing whirl through the overture In the South, a splendid example of Mediterranean envy sublimated in music.
Apart from a pretty, but slight clarinet rendition of a drawing-room song, the three remaining pieces reflect the grievous impact of the Great War.
Two works, with crisp French recitations by Florence Daguerre de Hureaux, deal out fervour that borders on the jingoistic but the third piece is more subtle. Une voix dans le desert balances the spoken word with the poignant soprano of Kate Royal, symbolising human hope in a world battered and crushed by war.
What once might have been military marches have been softened and the orchestral writing under de Hureaux's readings shows a composer striving to express the volatility of times that were irretrievably changing.
What: Elgar, Enigma Variations (Hyperion, through Ode Records) Rating: 5/5 Verdict: Elgar's most celebrated work is transcendent with some unexpected companions.
