Credits:

Elgar (1857-1934)

Description:

Elgar: Violin Concerto", the first recording by Renaud Capuçon and Simon Rattle! On the coupling, "Violin Sonata" with Stephen Hough. Elgar's Violin Concerto is nostalgic with a unique passion and is one of the great concertos of the late Romantic period, yet it is relatively rarely performed. As both Renaud Capuçon and Simon Rattle have pointed out, it is not a work that has been favored by French violinists. Perhaps despite the world-wide popularity of Elgar's Cello Concerto and Enigma Variations, this stems from a long perception in performance interpretation that the composer's music is exclusively and mysteriously "English." At the concerto's 1910 premiere, the London Symphony Orchestra, which Rattle now conducts for this recording as music director, and Fritz Kreisler, one of the great Viennese-born violinists, rather than a British soloist, performed it. Kreisler said, "Elgar's melody, orchestration, harmony, grandeur, it's wonderful. And it's all pure, uninfluenced music by anything else." Although he commissioned the work with the view that it was "pure and unaffected by anything else," Kreisler did not like it much and left no recordings of it. As a violinist himself, Elgar had a close relationship with the London Symphony Orchestra.Elgar conducted the London Symphony Orchestra on its first tour in 1905, its first year of existence, and premiered the "Introduction and Allegro"; in 1911 he became the orchestra's principal conductor, a position he held for two years. Later, he premiered "Falstaff" (1913) and "Cello Concerto" (1919) with the London Symphony Orchestra, and in 1932 Elgar conducted the legendary "Violin Concerto" with Yehudi Menuhin as soloist for a recording at the Abbey Road Studios. (1/2) Warner Music Japan

Tracklisting:

1.Violin Concerto in B minor Op.61~I. Allegro
2.Violin Concerto in B minor Op.61~II. Andante
3.Violin Concerto in B minor Op.61~III. Allegro molto
4.Violin Sonata in E minor Op.82~I. Allegro
5.Violin Sonata in E minor Op.82~II. Romance: Andante
6.Violin Sonata in E minor Op.82~III. Allegro non troppo