"...Elgar’s first electrical recording sessions took place on 27th April 1926 with a performance of Cockaigne with the Royal Albert Hall Orchestra, but the 1933 remake with the BBC Symphony Orchestra included in this compilation immediately highlights the greater virtuosity and tighter ensemble of the recently constituted Boult-trained orchestra, not to mention the ebullience of the composer relishing every moment even more fully than before. The first two Pomp and Circumstance Marches followed immediately, with the Enigma Variations the day after. Some of the Variations were rejected and remade more successfully on 30th August. Interestingly these 1926 recordings incorporated the organ for both Cockaigne and the finale of the Variations, but when the BBC version of the overture was set down, Elgar wrote to Rex Palmer in the Artistes’ Department of HMV stating that ‘the organ can (must!) be omitted’.

Some of the Marches feature minor cuts probably sanctioned to accommodate side lengths, but contemporary reports firmly trounce any other suggestion that Elgar’s performances were interpretatively tailored for duration restrictions. Pomp and Circumstance March No. 5 is another instance of recording just two days before a première guaranteed to generate maximum public interest. Given the composer’s impatience with the jingoistic high-jacking of these works by the time he came to record them, his high-speed volatility in the outer sections renders them unusually threatening rather than merely celebratory.

The importance of Elgar’s recorded legacy cannot be overestimated. Richard Strauss was his only contemporary to record such a large number of his own works, but these were for the most part uncoordinated and rather piecemeal issues by comparison with the attractively presented Elgar Edition marketed by HMV in 1934 at the time of the composer’s death. Moreover Strauss frequently seems inhibited by the extroversion of his own music, masking its essential features almost to the extent of wilful self-effacement and embarrassed sobriety. By contrast Elgar brings transparency, fluency and irrepressible zest to his own music. His flexibility and spontaneity are remarkable object lessons in natural rubato, phrasing and articulation. Nowhere is his distinctive nobilmente more accurately and sublimely defined than in the coda of Cockaigne, which, stately as a galleon, resolutely refuses to sink under its own weight. Elgar was working with musicians he knew and trusted. The chemistry is palpable and evergreen, even when compromised by momentary slips in sound quality and execution. Unlike Britten, the other major twentieth-century composer, who produced his own recorded testament, Elgar’s traversal significantly benefits by distance from the moment of creation. Mostly recorded towards the end of his life, it represents a rediscovery of the most personal music nourished by its own creator’s objective clarity and refreshing honesty."     - Ian Julier