Elgar's The Crown of India
Elgar's The Crown of India
The Gramophone Choice
The Crown of India (orch Payne, ed Davis)*. Imperial March, Op 32. Coronation March, Op 65. Empire March
*Clare Shearer mez *Gerald Finley bar *Barbara Marten, *Deborah McAndrew, *Joanne Mitchell spkrs *Sheffield Philharmonic Chorus; BBC Philharmonic Orchestra / Sir Andrew Davis
Chandos CHAN10570 (152’ · DDD · T) Buy from Amazon
Sir Andrew Davis’s first recording for Chandos brings this extravagantly enjoyable resuscitation of The Crown of India, an ‘Imperial Masque in Two Tableaux’ written swiftly in response to a lucrative fee from impresario Oswald Stoll (1866-1942). Henry Hamilton’s verse will doubtless provoke titters but Elgar’s music (mostly compiled from discarded material in his sketchbooks) is a different matter, displaying fertility of imagination, boldness of orchestral colour and an arresting range of mood. As the notes say: ‘It may not be India, but it is Elgar, who did this sort of thing better than anyone else.’
The demolition of the publisher’s archives in the early 1970s eradicated all existing orchestral material but Anthony Payne has managed to piece together the original score, drawing upon the piano arrangement by Hugh Blair in addition to the five surviving movements that Elgar selected for the already familiar suite premiered at the 1912 Three Choirs Festival in Hereford. The complete entertainment is housed on Disc 1 but the majority of listeners may well prefer Andrew Davis’s own, altogether more compact edition on the second disc, which omits the spoken element (the two CDs sensibly retail for the price of one).
The performance possesses all the sterling virtues that we have come to expect from one of this composer’s most distinguished exponents. Sir Andrew directs with contagious relish, no little charisma (witness the glinting spectacle of the ‘March of the Mogul Emperors’) and instinctive ebb and flow, the BBC PO and Sheffield Philharmonic Choir acquitting themselves in kind with admirable skill and commitment. Both vocal soloists are excellent (Gerald Finley projects marvellously in ‘The Rule of England’), and the three speakers do what they can with Hamilton’s clunky couplets. The fill-ups are perceptively handled, too, not least the markedly subdued and darkly sumptuous Coronation March of 1911, while both the Imperial March (1896‑97) and lesser-known Empire March (1924) have confidence and burnished splendour to spare.
