It seems surprising that a major work by Edward Elgar, for many years Britain's most successful composer, could only now be surfacing in full, but so it has, and it has the added virtue of being quite unlike anything else Elgar or anyone else ever wrote. The central attraction is The Fringes of the Fleet, set by Elgar during World War I to a cycle of poems by Rudyard Kipling, proclaiming the glories of the British fleet. It's a bit hard to tell from the notes (in English only) exactly what this work looked like in ...
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It seems surprising that a major work by Edward Elgar, for many years Britain's most successful composer, could only now be surfacing in full, but so it has, and it has the added virtue of being quite unlike anything else Elgar or anyone else ever wrote. The central attraction is The Fringes of the Fleet, set by Elgar during World War I to a cycle of poems by Rudyard Kipling, proclaiming the glories of the British fleet. It's a bit hard to tell from the notes (in English only) exactly what this work looked like in performance, but it seems to have been somewhere between a secular cantata and a stage show. It is for the unusual combination of four baritones and orchestra, and it sounds like a somewhat weightier version of The Pirates of Penzance, not everyone's cup of tea, but not without a good deal of immediate appeal. The work's disappearance from the repertoire was due not to anything done by Elgar, who was enthusiastic about it, but to Kipling's adamant refusal to allow further performances after...
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