His Second Symphony: no portly old English gent on a bicycle here, but a composer in the central European tradition at the peak of his powers producing a work that is big (in every sense), powerful, emotional, edgy, raw and utterly individual.

NOM etc.



Anyway, Elgar. I guess I'm with PW about the 2nd symph, but that and the Enigmas are as far as I go with the guy. It's another disconnect for me. Can't abide the routine trundlings of the 'cello concerto, the chamber music seems unbearably twee, and PLEASE don't mention the oratorios.  Perhaps he's of his age, and I don't get that, but a little goes an extremely long way for me.

Well as far as I know the waltz 'The Door Of My Dreams' was not recorded on the Pye label 

I have exactly the same problem with most of the choral music, but can live happily with both symphonies, Enigma, Cockaigne and In the South, Falstaff and (occasionally) the cello concerto. In a sentimental mood the Nursery Suite and the two Wand of Youth Suites still appeal, too. If pushed, though, I'd say that the Introduction and Allegro for Strings is his work I most admire: real virtuoso stuff, sensitive and brooding then strong and muscular by turns, devoid of any of the Victorian sanctimony that represents what for me is his less palatable side.

(But then, though you'd never have guessed, I'm more a Vaughan Williams kind of guy....)

I love Elgar, but I can find the cello concerto, in the south, and his more "pompous" works a but too much.

Recommendations from me include the violin concerto, string quartet, piano quintetl sospiri, romance for bassoon, and carissima.

Tommo

I second the Piano Quintet. And Dream Children.

I'm happy because the LSO Mahler 2 last night was so shiver-producing. Apart from the alto soloist, whose words were appalling. Much of the Urlicht sounded as though it was being sung by a sheep too. Also, I managed to walk from Downing Street to the Barbican in half an hour!

Moi aussi, eruanto.

The Mahler 2 that is, not the walk from Downing Street to the Barbican although that used to be a fairly regular after work hike. Did you stay north of the river? I managed to persuade myself that, counter-intuitively, it was very slightly shorter, point to point, if you cross over to the south bank and back again but I suspect I may have walked a bit faster whenever I did it that way because I wanted it to be true. I suppose I really ought to measure it on a map. A task for this evening perhaps.

Another rather pleasing counter-intuitive thing is: if you are in Whitehall, and ask yourself what you would be likely to see when you look down Whitehall Place, you would be very unlikely to say St Paul's Cathedral. And yet you do. It surprised me every time.

Exactly.  Sounded as though it was being sung by a sheep.  That's the phrase I have been searching for, having been to the former performance of that concert.

Course I was front row centre, and couldn't see the alto, only hear her.  I could see the soprano - in the same manner that I can see the London Eye from my living room if I lean out of the window and crane my neck