Elgar's Marches
Classical budget label Naxos has notched up another success with its release of Elgar’s Marches, performed by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. A quality release devoted to these perennial favourites, often treated as orchestral ‘filler’, was required, and it’s certainly what we got: all five of the ‘Pomp and Circumstance’ marches, together with a miscellany of other offerings.
The accompanying notes assure us that the music is “by no means jingoistic in conception”, and refer to the “tongue in cheek” with which it is appreciated. This refusal to call a spade a spade is puzzling – it might make the pleasure less guilt-inducing for some, but it hardly helps us understand Elgar’s purposes or the spirit of his age.
At least the orchestra play it like they mean it (loyal dominion folk to a man), their brisk tempo reminiscent of Elgar’s own performances from the 1930s. In fairness, we do hear variety and subtlety in Elgar’s treatment of the form. The opener, George V’s Coronation March, is the pick of them. Its stately, sombre and even portentous tone is well conveyed providing a perfect contrast to the trio of ‘Pomp and Circumstance’ marches which follow.
The rasping brass come into their own in these, especially numbers one and two (the former most famous as the melody for Land of Hope and Glory), although the recording might have given the bass drum a more defined presence. That the genre is no compositional cul-de-sac is shown by the Symphonic Prelude which rounds off affairs; the spirit and technique of the Marches here infuses an entirely different form.
It sums up the CD nicely: a simple concept in the hands of a superbly inventive composer, well communicated in performance.
21st Apr 2005