Elspeth Wyllie

Another review for ‘Enigmas’

‘…fresh and different sound. A real treat.’ Jeremy Condliffe, The Chronicle

This delightful album is out to coincide with Elgar’s 160th birthday on 2nd June, and it’s a recording of solo piano and chamber works, featuring Worcester’s most famous son’s own solo piano transcription of Enigma Variations.

The Review Corner are big fans of Elgar, having lived in Malvern, not too far from his grave at Little Malvern, and sometimes tramping the hills listening to him on a Sony cassette player. (Mr Roget is also buried, interred, laid to rest and entombed in Malvern).

This recording offers a fresh and different sound to the famous work, making it both cleaner and more intimate, Nimrod still being surprisingly uplifting. We confess to finding Elgar a little dusty of late, so this CD opens him up once again to repeated listening pleasure.

The Elgar is complemented by a collection of other work by British composers, such as Edwin York Bowen’s Sonata For Flute And Piano and Kenneth Leighton’s Elegy, but all of it is, as we say, rather delightful. A real treat.