Elgar by Lawrance Collingwood

In January 1934, Edward Elgar supervised recordings of his music by telephone from his sick bed. He was to die only a month later.

The conductor of that 1934 session was Lawrance Collingwood, who returned to the studio 20 years later to make this recording of Elgar's music. Collingwood was a house conductor and producer for EMI for many years, as well as principal conductor at Sadler's Wells and a composer. Most of his recordings were accompaniments, but he did make this and one later Elgar LP.

I have included the contemporary Gramophone review by Trevor Harvey in the download, and I agree in general with his assessment - the Serenade for Strings performance is bland (and sounds curiously modern because of it), but the Bavarian Dances are quite well done and the Nursery Suite has a very beautiful violin solo in the last number. I also agree that the LP is well recorded - although I did have to do some readjusting of the sound balance to bring that out.

The download also includes (English) Columbia's two-page Gramophone ad for its September 1954 releases, including discs featuring Karajan, Cluytens, Kletzki, Anda, and Gieseking.

This record has not been reissued to my knowledge - but I imagine someone will let me know if it is otherwise available.