

SIGCD116
Release Date: January 2008
Originally recorded in 2008
Sir Edward Elgar
Nicolai Myaskovsky
Jamie Walton
Philharmonic Orchestra
Alex Briger
Henry Wood Hall, London
Richard Sutcliffe
Andrew Mellor
Jane Blythe
Orchestral & Concertos
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SIR EDWARD ELGAR (1857 – 1934)
(1857-1934)Cello Concerto in E minor, Op. 85
NICOLAI MYASKOVSKY
(1881-1950)Cello Concerto in C minor, Op. 66
Notes
The cello concertos of Elgar and Myaskovsky written in 1919 and 1944 respectively, engender few similarities these days but make an exciting coupling due not only to the disparate nature of the composers’ lives and situations, but also to the common ground they tread; both composers were in their early sixties when writing their main work for the instrument.
A stunning performance by Jamie Walton, accompanied by the magnificent Philharmonia Orchestra.
Jamie has enjoyed success as a rising international soloist and has given concerts in some of the most prestigious concert halls in the world. He appears regularly at the Wigmore Hall and Symphony Hall, Birmingham and has performed with leading orchestras such as the Vienna Chamber Orchestra and the Philharmonia Orchestra.
"This is probably the best performance of the Elgar Cello Concerto that I have heard. Walton cannot be beaten. I shall treasure this recording – literally: I shall hoard it against a musically rainy day."
Paul Adrian Rooke, The Elgar Society Journal

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Reviews
Sebastien Foucart
Jonathan Woolf
Michael Kennedy
It was a process Barbirolli helped along with two exceptional recordings as a conductor: the one everyone knows with Jackie de Pre, and the connoisseur’s choice, made a decade earlier with the French cellist Andre Navarra. In the later one Barbirolli allowed Du Pre her indulgences, but in the Navarra his pacing is exceptional. Walton and Briger are within a few seconds of his timings in all four movements, much to the music’s advantage, especially in the first movement which is taken more quickly than has now become the norm. Elgar, too, would surely have admired Walton for his restraint and nobility of tone, particularly in the two adagio passages.
This is an emotional work, but Elgar faced the world with a stiff upper lip, as Walton’s performance recognises, and this very reticence makes the music’s deeply ingrained sadness even more affecting. The coupling is Myaskovsky’s 1945 cello concerto, an eloquent and melodious piece - none the worse for being old-fashioned - which also benefits from a brisker than unusual performance."
David Mellor
Whereas the Elgar concerto of 1919 looks back with nostalgia to a lost age of grandeur and to an old order shattered by the First World War, Myaskovsky’s of 1944-5 muses with despondency on the depredations and apprehension triggered by the Second World War a quarter of a century later. Both works have an elegiac feel to them, the ruminative atmosphere of their opening bars being recalled in the closing pages.
In interpreting these two works, Walton is not someone who wears his heart on his sleeve, which makes the atmosphere all the more poignant in the slow, mellow unfolding of the Elgar’s first movement and central adagio, and in the opening lento of the Myaskovsky. There is emotional force, but it is unforced. The first peak in the Elgar, for example, is achieved with naturalness and inevitability as the cello climbs its aspirational scale towards a top E. In the Myaskovsky, the cello, echoing the bassoon’s opening phrase and the strings’ aura of melancholy, weaves a brooding line as if relating a sad Russian epic.
Walton applies his warmth of timbre and refined spectrum of colouring perceptively to both works, as does the orchestra. At the same time, his deftness in the Elgar’s scherzo and in the passages of the Myaskovsky’s finale gives the music a wonderful airborne quality. Orchestra and soloist are as one in conveying the subtle spirit of this music on a disc that has an ineluctable power to draw you into its expressive realms."
Geoffrey Norris
After the Royal Northern College of Music, he studied like du Pré with the great British teacher William Pleeth, though he very much follows his own star. His expression is clean and uncluttered, his musicianship unusually selfless. Only the music’s will matters. That plus his wonderful cello, the 1712 Guarneri costing £890,000, which he finally secured last year.
In his latest concerto recording with the Philharmonia Orchestra, under the Australian-born conductor Alexander Briger, Walton maintains a notably lower temperature than the legendary du Pré. Yet that doesn’t mean he’s not feeling the music. The cello quakes with vibrato, but sensibly avoids floods of tears. The pensive beauty of his slow movement is very moving; under his noble carriage, you still sense Elgar’s utter despair at the horrific slaughter of the First World War (concluded just a few months before he began composing).
The recording brings a few clouds of its own, dulling the lustrous tones that you normally expect with the Philharmonia. The sound needs more breathing space. Even so, this CD still stands out in a crowded field. Along with Walton’s caring sobriety, there’s the imaginative coupling.
This is Myaskovsky’s cello concerto of 1945, written in the last months of the century’s next world conflagration. If Elgar’s brand of yearning feels indubitably English, Myaskovsky’s music cries "Made in Russia". For all the gulf in the two concertos’ musical styles, they share a similar heartbeat: both composers were wringing their hands over death, destruction and innocence lost. Since Myaskovsky finds more peace than Elgar, we end the disc with some gentle uplift.
The same national mix is to be repeated in the cellist’s next CD, matching Britten and Shostakovich." ****
Geoff Brown
Stephen Pettitt
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