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The Dream of Gerontius discography

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The Dream of Gerontius, Edward Elgar's 1900 work for singers and orchestra,[n 1] had to wait forty-five years for its first complete recording. Sir Henry Wood made acoustic recordings of four extracts from The Dream of Gerontius as early as 1916, with Clara Butt as the angel, and Henry Coward's Sheffield Choir recorded a portion of the Part I "Kyrie" in the same period. Edison Bell recorded the work under Joseph Batten in abridged form in 1924 (the recording, with orchestral and choral forces considerably affected by the limitations of recording methods of the day, was swiftly rendered obsolete with the introduction of electronic recording the following year). HMV issued excerpts from two live performances conducted by Elgar in 1927, with the soloists Margaret Balfour, Steuart Wilson, Tudor Davies, Herbert Heyner and Horace Stevens; further portions of the first of those two performances, deemed unfit for publication at the time, have since been published by EMI and other companies.[2]

There also exist fragments privately recorded by amateurs "off-air" (i.e. from live radio broadcasts), some of which have received commercial issue in recent years although none are known to exist in complete form.[n 2] They give alternative accounts of artists such as Heddle Nash, Malcolm Sargent, Adrian Boult (who all later recorded the work commercially) and Horace Stevens (who recorded the Angel of the Agony's solo under Elgar), and accounts of artists such as Astra Desmond, Muriel Brunskill, Parry Jones, and Keith Falkner, all noted for their performances of the work, and never commercially recorded singing it.

The first complete recording was made in 1945 conducted by Sargent. Since then it has received further commercial recordings as shown below.

Conductor Tenor Mezzo Baritone Chorus Orchestra Label Year
Malcolm Sargent Heddle Nash Gladys Ripley Dennis Noble, Norman Walker Huddersfield Choral Society Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra EMI 1945
Sir Malcolm Sargent Richard Lewis Marjorie Thomas John Cameron Huddersfield Choral Society Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra EMI 1955
Hans Swarowsky Julius Patzak Ira Malaniuk Ludwig Welter Chor des Österreichischen Rundfunks Orchester des Österreichischen Rundfunks Elgar Editions 1960[3]
Sir John Barbirolli Richard Lewis Janet Baker Kim Borg Hallé Choir, Sheffield Philharmonic Choir, Ambrosian Opera Chorus Hallé Orchestra EMI 1965
Benjamin Britten Peter Pears Yvonne Minton John Shirley-Quirk London Symphony Chorus, Choir of King's College, Cambridge London Symphony Orchestra Decca 1971
Sir Adrian Boult Nicolai Gedda Helen Watts Robert Lloyd London Philharmonic Choir, John Alldis Choir New Philharmonia Orchestra EMI 1976
Alexander Gibson Robert Tear Alfreda Hodgson Benjamin Luxon Scottish National Chorus Scottish National Orchestra CRD 1976
Yevgeny Svetlanov Arthur Davies Felicity Palmer Norman Bailey London Symphony Chorus USSR State Symphony Orchestra Melodiya 1983
Simon Rattle John Mitchinson Dame Janet Baker John Shirley-Quirk City of Birmingham Symphony Chorus City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra EMI 1987
Richard Hickox Arthur Davies Felicity Palmer Gwynne Howell London Symphony Chorus London Symphony Orchestra Chandos 1988
Vernon Handley Anthony Rolfe Johnson Catherine Wyn-Rogers Michael George Huddersfield Choral Society, Liverpool Philharmonic Choir Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra EMI 1993
David Hill William Kendall Sarah Fryer Matthew Best Waynflete Singers, Bournemouth Symphony Chorus Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra Naxos 1997
Sir Andrew Davis Philip Langridge Catherine Wyn-Rogers Alastair Miles BBC Symphony Chorus BBC Symphony Orchestra NVC[4] 1999
Sir Colin Davis David Rendall Anne Sofie von Otter Alastair Miles London Symphony Chorus London Symphony Orchestra LSO Live 2005
Sakari Oramo Justin Lavender Jane Irwin Peter Rose City of Birmingham Symphony Chorus City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra CBSO 2006
Sir Mark Elder Paul Groves Alice Coote Bryn Terfel Hallé Choir, Hallé Youth Choir Hallé Orchestra Hallé 2008
Edo de Waart Peter Auty Michelle Breedt John Hancock Collegium Vocale Gent Royal Flemish Philharmonic Orchestra Pentatone 2013

Additionally, there exist two further accounts by Barbirolli, both live: a 1957 performance in Italy with Jon Vickers, Constance Shacklock, Marian Nowakowski, and the Coro and Orchestra Sinfonica della RAI di Roma; and a January 1959 performance in New York with Richard Lewis, Maureen Forrester, Morley Meredith, the Westminster Choir, and the New York Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra. Both were recorded off-air from broadcasts, and the RAI performance was circulated widely, though unofficially; both performances have in recent years seen legitimate commercial issue of off-air transcriptions.

The work was recorded for television in 1968 at Canterbury Cathedral. This performance featured Peter Pears, Janet Baker and John Shirley-Quirk, conducted by Sir Adrian Boult. The performance was broadcast in that same year, and received a repeat showing several years later. It has received no commercial issue; long unavailable, a VHS home-recording can now be found on YouTube.

The work received a further television broadcast by the BBC in 1997, in celebration of St Paul's Cathedral's tercentenary, and the BBC's 75th anniversary. The performance (commercially released by NVC in 1999, noted above), under Sir Andrew Davis, featured Philip Langridge, Catherine Wyn Rogers, Alastair Miles, and the BBC Chorus and Symphony Orchestra. It was released on DVD in 2006 by Warner Music.[5]

Critical opinion

The BBC Radio 3 feature "Building a Library" has presented comparative reviews of all available versions of The Dream of Gerontius on three occasions, and recommended as follows:

  • 5 March 1988, reviewer, William Mann:
    • Sir Alexander Gibson[6]
  • 29 November 1997, reviewer, Michael Kennedy:
    • Malcolm Sargent (1945)[7]
    • Sir John Barbirolli (1965)[8]
  • 7 October 2006, reviewer, Andrew Green:
    • Sir John Barbirolli (1965)[9]
    • Malcolm Sargent (1945)[10]

The Penguin Guide to Recorded Classical Music, 2008, gave its maximum four star rating to the DVD recording of The Dream of Gerontius conducted by Sir Andrew Davis. No audio recording received more than three stars (representing "an outstanding performance and recording"). The recordings with three stars were those conducted by Barbirolli (1965), Boult, Hickox, and Sargent (1945 and 1955).[11]

A comparative review in Gramophone in 2003 by Andrew Farach Colton recommended the recordings by Sargent (1945), Barbirolli (1965), and Britten.[12] In a comparative review for the Elgar Society, Walter Essex preferred the EMI Barbirolli set.[13]

Notes and references

Notes
  1. ^ It is often called an oratorio, but Elgar did not use the term for this work and disapproved when others did so.[1]
  2. ^ This is mainly because of the time limitations of direct-to-disc recording and the concomitant problem of changing over from the full disc to a new empty disc, which could only be overcome if the amateur possessed two cutters.
References
  1. ^ "Dream of Gerontius, The", Oxford Companion to Music, Oxford Music Online, accessed 22 October 2010 (subscription required)
  2. ^ "The Elgar Birthday Records", The Gramophone, June 1927, p. 17
  3. ^ Sung in German
  4. ^ Audio-only release of a BBC television broadcast
  5. ^ Music Web, accessed 25 October 2013
  6. ^ Gibson "Building a Library", 1988[permanent dead link] BBC Radio 3
  7. ^ Sargent "Building a Library" 1997[permanent dead link] BBC Radio 3
  8. ^ Barbirolli "Building a Library" 1997[permanent dead link] BBC Radio 3
  9. ^ Barbirolli "Building a Library" 2006[permanent dead link] BBC Radio 3
  10. ^ Sargent "Building a Library" 2006[permanent dead link] BBC Radio 3
  11. ^ March, pp. 438–40
  12. ^ Farach Colton, Andrew, "Vision of the Hereafter", Gramophone, February 2003, p. 36
  13. ^ Elgar Society, accessed 25 October 2013

Bibliography

  • March, Ivan (ed). The Penguin Guide to Recorded Classical Music 2008, Penguin Books, London, 2007. ISBN 978-0-14-103336-5
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