# ELGAR chamber music



## mtmailey (Oct 21, 2011)

i have on a cd the Elgar string quartet & the quintet for piano and strings,have anyone else heard these?


----------



## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

I have both these works on one CD (EMI) and I remember they bored me quite a bit.

Edit: out of curiosity I'm playing this CD right now and they're not that bad, though the quartet can hardly be called drawing.


----------



## Klavierspieler (Jul 16, 2011)

I very much enjoy both works. I'm playing the quintet with my ensemble.


----------



## Taneyev (Jan 19, 2009)

Have the quartet by the Brodsky and the Stratton SQ ; the quintet by the Stratton with Harriet Cohen and Ogdon with the Allegri SQ, and the violin sonata by Hugh Bean-David Parkhose, and by Albert Sammons-William Murdoch. The Stratton are from the 30s.


----------



## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

I enjoy the quintet very much. I think I may have heard the quartet since I listened to the quintet on a CD with the quartet, but I do not have any remembrance of it (probably means it didn't make much of an impression). 

I have heard the quintet by Ian Brown and Sorrel SQ (Chandos) and Donohoe and the Maggini SQ (Naxos).


----------



## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

Once you get away from his symphonies, Elgar is a delight. I enjoy Nash Ensemble's Piano Quintet, and Coull's String Quartet, both on Helios.


----------



## Head_case (Feb 5, 2010)

Errr... Who hasn't?!

I'm afraid I find Elgar overrated compared to the likes of Daniel Jones, Moeran, McEwen, Rubbra, Maconchy, Bowen, Foulds etc...

The recordings I use are by the legendary Aeolian Quartet on LP. They make average written music sound brilliantly played brilliant music, rather than mere brilliantly played average music.


----------



## Quartetfore (May 19, 2010)

*Elgar chamber music*

When it comes to the Piano Quintet, I have to agree witjh some of our posters in that it is a bit of a bore. As fore the Quartet, not "great music" but worth a hearing now and then. But an exception must be made for the slow movement of the Quartet. It seems to me that it is a sort of a summing up of time that has come to an end.


----------



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

I think they are interesting works, as well as all of his other works, eg. those for string orchestra like the _Serenade_. The _Piano Quintet_ has this Spanish salony tune in the first movement which is quite odd for Elgar. The _String Quartet _ has a final movement whose contrupuntal writing is just as engaging for me as Beethoven's _Grosse Fuge_, which I don't doubt influenced it in some ways. Both of these works were written after WW1, when Elgar was asking himself a lot of things about what had happened, how a whole generation of young lads he saw grow up went to fight the war and never came back. They stayed & have been lying amongst the fields of France ever since. The questioning motif in the SQ's first moevement which never seems to be entirely resolved speaks to these thoughts and emotions strongly.

Funny how people today here find them boring, but back in 1919 when they were premiered at Wigmore Hall in London, some critics were quite unkind. They saw the louder and faster outer movements as being ugly and harsh. Elgar was writing kind of orchestrally for the piano in the quintet, which had mainly or only been done before by Brahms. But unlike in much of Brahms, there doesn't seem to be an easy resolution or joining of the dots in these two works. A lot of questions are asked but not many seemed to be answered & I think that this may well have been part of why those critics where a bit miffed, apart from the more in-you-face dynamics in these works' outer movements...


----------



## presto (Jun 17, 2011)

mtmailey said:


> i have on a cd the Elgar string quartet & the quintet for piano and strings,have anyone else heard these?


I know them very well and love them, he also wrote a very beautiful Violin sonata too.
Elgar isn't all Pomp and Circumstance!


----------



## Quartetfore (May 19, 2010)

I`m happy to see tha Elgars Violin Sonata has come up----Its one of my very favorite works in that area. I think that it might the best of his three Chamber works that where composed around the same time


----------



## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Mtmaily do you like elgar!??


----------



## Taneyev (Jan 19, 2009)

Quartetfore said:


> I`m happy to see tha Elgars Violin Sonata has come up----Its one of my very favorite works in that area. I think that it might the best of his three Chamber works that where composed around the same time


Best recording of the violin sonata IMO was Sammons-William Murdoch (1935).


----------

