In this year of celebrations of what would have been the 150th birthday of Sir Edward Elgar, it’s good to read that rare footage of the composer has been unearthed.

The BBC website reports, “Rare footage of Sir Edward Elgar conducting the London Symphony Orchestra is to be screened at the climax of a music festival in Powys. Some of the clips, including home movie shots of the composer at home with his dogs, are thought to have never been seen in public before.”

The hour-long film compilation was shown on June 24 at the Gregynog Festival, near Newtown, Powys in Wales.

Shots of Elgar conducting the London Symphony Orchestra, playing Land of Hope and Glory, are believed to have been filmed by British Pathe news at the famous Abbey Road studios in 1929.

W.H.Reed’s Elgar As I Knew Him — Part 1

It’s a sad fact that the anniversary of Elgar’s 150th birthday on Saturday 2nd June, has - in comparison to the 40th anniversary of the recording of Sgt Pepper - received very little attention by the media (with exception of Syntagma) with the BBC’s Midlands Today programme the only one that has given England’s pre-eminent composer more than a passing mention, but only then to ask mainly uncomprehending folk in the streets of Worcester to name their favourite piece of Elgar’s music, with the inevitable result being ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ and ‘Nimrod‘, with, worse still, many of them never having heard of the man; but then most of them probably couldn’t tell you who the president of Uzbekistan is either.

Back in the 1930s, even soon after the composer’s death, a good many people in those dark threatening days had already forgotten who Elgar was, with his music already considered by many in the arts establishment as old fashioned, and the anthem of an earlier age of empire. Nothing could have been further from the truth of course, and W.H. (Billy) Reed’s lovely memoir, Elgar: As I Knew Him, published in 1936, still one of the best books about Elgar ever written, and by a man who knew him intimately.

Let me quote you from the preface to give you some idea of how the book came about.

“ At the instance of Mr. Bernard Shaw, and many others of the friends and admirers of Sir Edward Elgar, I have been persuaded - I might almost say cajoled - into setting down these intimate and personal things concerning him, gathered during a close friendship extending over a period of nearly thirty years.

“ I was very diffident about undertaking this task, knowing full well that there are many others possessed of literary ability and experience in writing who are far better qualified in that respect. It is one thing to tell these intimate anecdotes and happenings at the dinner-table or in ordinary conversation, and quite another to set them down in readable form to be perused in cold blood by the multitude.

“ It was pointed out to me, however, that I was probably the only person who had the close knowledge of those daily happenings, and the only person, therefore, who could set them down at first hand. I was flattered by being told that my memory was so good that I could repeat Elgar’s exact words in recounting any anecdotes, just as if he had made the remarks recorded in this book yesterday; but I knew very well that, if I did not make this effort soon, I should forget a good deal of it; in which case, most, if not all, of these otherwise unobtainable details of his life would be lost.

“ While still hesitating and turning the matter over in my mind, recalling the past, and testing my memory concerning these things, I received a letter from Mr. Bernard Shaw calculated to fire me with the necessary courage to make a start:

‘ SCHEME FOR THE ELGAR BOOK
SECTION ONE
PERSONAL

‘Jump straight into the story at once - thus, “Elgar and I met first in 19??,” ’ etc.

“This was followed by another letter:

“ ‘Perhaps I should get the enclosed typed for you; but, as all orchestral players are inured to impossible manuscripts, I send it, to save time, just as I scrawled it. It may just serve to start you. Once started, you will no difficulty in going ahead in your own way.’

“ Thus stimulated, I hastened to begin.

“ After writing some ten or twelve pages I sent the sheets over to Malvern, where Bernard Shaw was residing. His reply was:

“ ‘ This is alright. Carry on like that and the book will be a success. I read it to T.E. Shaw ( Col. Lawrence of Arabia), who has a very keen literary flair, and to Mrs. Shaw. They agreed with me without a moment’s hesitation.’

“ After reading this, and being further assured verbally that, though playing the fiddle requires a high degree of trained professional skill, literature is successfully practised every day by cheerful amateurs, I threw modesty to the winds and went ahead recklessly…”

Reckless or not, Billy Reed - who was the leader of the LSO ( an orchestra Elgar considered his own) for many years - proved himself to be no amateur writer, but a thorough professional who manages to capture Elgar the man to perfection, and in a way that is both human, extremely funny, and almost unbearably moving at times.

To Be Continued…

When Sir Paul’s tone Poem Standing Stone was first premiered, and then released as a CD in 1997, it attracted a very mixed reception, which is fair enough. In fact I rather like to see the musical purists get their underwear in a bit of a twist when they try to tell us how bad something is, how derivative, how shallow, how it sounds as if it has been written by a committee, and, how dare you step over the musical boundaries and try your hand at ’serious’ music. In other words elitism at its worst. And believe me if there was a decree from No 10 and the White House tomorrow that all music be left in the hands of the purists, then music, all music, would die very quickly, and good riddance because none of it would be worth listening to.

And McCartney’s Standing Stone is worth listening to, and more than once.

Sir Paul’s first recorded effort at ’serious’ composing (as if composing hundreds of popular songs was not serious for goodness sake) was his 1991 Liverpool Oratorio which I remember as a tremendously moving piece of work that quite naturally showed the influence of Elgar (who made the oratorio his own in the early 20th century), but to my ears much more that of Vaughan Williams, Arnold Bax, plus a good helping of John Tavener and Malcolm Arnold, who were, and are, masters of assimilation, as is McCartney - you only have to listen to Sgt Pepper, the early Wings recordings, and some recent solo McCartney, to understand what I’m getting at; and without assimilation art, any art, cannot move ahead, cannot be creative.

And it’s the same with Standing Stone, McCartney’s first real stab at a symphonic piece. It worked in October 1997 when it was premiered and released, and it worked last night when, with Hilary, I listened to it again.

This is what McCartney has to say about Standing Stone in the liner notes to the CD…

” I’ve spent much of the last four years composing what has now become my second large-scale classical work, the symphonic poem Standing Stone. Unlike the Liverpool Oratorio which features prominent roles for four solo singers, Standing Stone relies entirely on colours and effects drawn from the orchestral and choral forces. With no soloists to propel the “story” and to help keep me on track throughout the writing of about 75 minutes of music I wrote a poem in which I try to describe the way Celtic man might have wondered about the origins of life and the mystery of human existence…”

And it is there that we have the secret of this piece of wonderful music - that of man wondering what life is all about. It’s the same secret we discover when we look at Anthony Gormley’s 100 iron men looking out to sea from Crosby beach - their solitariness, their stillness and their fortitude. It is what we hear in this music, especially in Part 9, where McCartney introduces a melody of such simplicity and beauty that it almost breaks your heart (which has come from a good deal of contemplation and experience), and what we hear too in the music of Sir Malcolm Arnold who, like McCartney, was criticised by those damned purists for being popular. And the more I listen to Standing Stone the more I realise that Arnold has undoubtedly been a greater influence (consciously or subconsciously) than any other composer on McCartney’s symphonic music, but not in a negative sense. The underlying echoes of Arnold (Sir Paul might disagree) come through to me as a kind of homage to a man who shared many of Sir Paul’s ideals and beliefs, and, like Paul, wrote music from the heart.

Then it occurred to Hilary - who has recently started a campaign to save Gormley’s ‘Another Place’ at Crosby - that McCartney’s Standing Stone is effectively the soundtrack to Gormley’s magnificent work on that haunted, industrial, almost derelict beach, and that McCartney’s wonderfully evocative, emotional music must, somehow, be performed there.

Any thoughts on how we can make it happen?

Standing Stone, recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra, and conducted by Lawrence Foster, is available on EMI Classics (USA link or UK link).

Sir Paul McCartney’s latest classical work, Ecce Cor Meum, Behold My Heart, a work for chorus and orchestra, will be premiered on Friday 3rd of November at the Royal Albert Hall, London. It is also available on EMI Classics.

Steve Newman

On May 21st, the London Symphony Chorus celebrated its 40th anniversary in some style with a concert which will be followed by recordings, commissions and a party.

The London Symphony Chorus made its debut on Saturday 21 May 1966 when it recorded Mahler’s Symphony No 2 for Decca at the Kingsway Hall with Sir Georg Solti and the LSO.

On its 40th birthday the Chorus took part in a concert performance of Beethoven’s Fidelio to be recorded for LSO Live, conducted by its President Sir Colin Davis. The 40th anniversary was also marked by a concert of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ A Sea Symphony with the LSO on 4th June, conducted by the Chorus’ Conductor Emeritus and former Music Director Richard Hickox. The LSC Endowment Fund contributed to the cost of recording this concert; live for Chandos.

2006 is a landmark year for the London Symphony Chorus as it tours to the USA, Italy, France and Germany, as well as performing in London and other UK cities with Sir Colin Davis, Sir Bernard Haitink, Mark Elder, Valery Gergiev, Richard Hickox, James Judd, Neema Jarvi, Tadaaki Otaka, Daniel Gatti, Vasily Petrenko and Jean-Claude Casadesus.