"The British Symphonic Collection": an ultra-bargain box

[gasman]

Just taken delivery of this box set - I actually think it's brilliant and there's lots there that I personally enjoy. Thoroughly recommended......

[Hovite]

Dutton recorded a "realisation" of the Elgar PC by Robert Walker. I won't miss the 1st subject (1st movement) orchestrated by Elgar himself for its dark, haunting mystery but the rest is.... well, forget it. I suppose there is just not enough material to reconstruct a convincing Elgar. I guess even Anthony Payne would fail.

I have to agree that Walker's version is a failure. Perhaps someone else will take a look at the fragments one day. I seem to remember watching a television program about this a few years back, and there is apparently no shortage of genuine bits, but Elgar hadn't strung them together, possibly not even in his own mind.

Payne's version of Elgar's 3rd Symphony is utterly brilliant.

[eschiss1]

I seem to recall liking one of the others of Walker's reconstructions- King Arthur possibly?... though that had so much music in common with the 3rd symphony that I was very confused listening to it. I'm probably confused now. About Payne's reconstruction I agree. Of the three recordings I know of, I think I prefer Colin Davis' LSO one which I've heard on Austrian radio from time to time - he and the orchestra get the dynamics (in the broad, not just the ff-pp sense) of the finale especially (its opening is a good example) - the orchestration, the dynamics (now in the narrow sense ), the quirks of harmony and stress-destress - some Elgar, some Payne, there - to really sound much more than it seems happens on the Naxos recording (which I have and am generally much pleased with, mind...)