Elgar - Cello Concerto; Cockaigne; Sea Pictures

Elgar's Cello Concerto in E Minor, Op. 85 Jacqueline du Pre and the LSO, conducted by Sir John Barbirolli Madam, you have an instrument between your legs capable of giving pleasure to thousands, and all you can do is sit there and scratch it! So said the eminently witty conductor Sir Thomas Beecham, in reference to a lady 'cellist. He certainly wasn't, however, referring to the unmatchable Jacqueline du Pre, who, in my humble opinion, was the most gifted cellist ever and whose short, tragic life is somehow augured by this melancholic recording. It's an EMI classic, which means that it's an old, old recording, but so good that it shouldn't be ...

THE MAN: SIR EDWARD ELGAR It's probably futile for me to tell you who is Edward Elgar. To the British readers here he holds about the same position as Sibelius does for me as a Finn, being THE composer whose musical language captures the ideologies of the country, working as a kind of stereotypical signature for the people. Elgar was born in 1857 as the son of a music shop owner and through a course of self-instruction became a masterful orchestrator and soon found himself as a reknowned choral composer with a great deal of choral works and other religiously titled pieces to his credit. However, it was not until 1899 that his reputation was sealed as a truly ...