Flemish Radio Orchestra - Elgar, E.: Symphony No. 1 - The Kingdom: Prelude (2007)

Elgar on Glossa? And why not, when it brings together one of the UK’s leading conducting talents in Romantic music, Martyn Brabbins with the committed advocacy of an orchestra rising superbly to the technical challenges of the First Symphony with both spontaneity and energy: the FlemishRadio Orchestra, who here make there second appearance on the label.

Brabbins is an ideal director to be at the helm of a work that sits comfortably in the Late Romantic European tradition of orchestral music and for marshalling the forces which can shed new light on a work from outside the grand performing practice of the British orchestras. In this 150th anniversary year of Edward Elgar’s birth it is surely right – as well as artistically exciting – to hear how musicians from outside the UK approach one of the masterpieces of the composer, the son of a piano-tuner and born in the village of Broadheath outside Worcester in England. Indeed, Colin Anderson’s perceptive booklet article has more to say on the positioning of Elgar in the general scheme of European musical history.

To accompany the First Symphony conductor and orchestra have added an engaging rendition of the Prelude to The Kingdom, Elgar’s oratorio, completed in 1906, two years before he finished his First Symphony; both mature statements from Britain’s finest.