The Elgar Society marks its 75th anniversary in January 2026, and in celebration of this significant milestone SOMM Recordings is re-issuing—as a digital release—The Songs of Edward Elgar. This recital, a collaboration supported by The Elgar Society and the first of several orchestral and choral recordings to follow over the years, was originally recorded by Siva Oke in London in 1998 under the catalogue number SOMMCD 220. This digital re-issue includes new liner notes by the English musicologist, Julian Rushton, who has published extensively on Elgar. The renowned singers are Catherine Wyn-Rogers mezzo-soprano, Neil Mackie tenor, and Christopher Maltman baritone, with pianist Malcolm Martineau, recognized as one of the leading accompanists of his generation.
The output of Edward Elgar (1857–1934) includes 48 completed songs and more than 20 that he left unfinished, suggesting a high level of self-criticism. This release includes 23 of the songs, covering his early years until near the end of his life, although precise dates are difficult to establish.
The first nine songs on the programme are from c.1885–95, when Elgar was beginning to be known outside his native Worcestershire. These include a setting of the “Lute Song” from Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s 1875 play, Queen Mary. Also included in this first group is Rondel in a translation by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow after the Chronicles of the medieval author, Jean Froissart. (Elgar’s 1890 Concert Overture inspired by the Froissant Chronicles comes from this same time frame.) Although Elgar rarely used more than one poem per author, he set more than ten of the poems by his wife, Caroline Alice, Lady Elgar, the first one being The Wind at Dawn, which she wrote in 1880 and he set in 1888.
Near the end of his life Elgar is reported as saying, “It is better to set the best second-rate poetry to music, for the most immortal verse is music already.” However, there are other notable writers represented on this release. In 1904, around the time of the “Enigma” Variations and The Dream of Gerontius, Elgar used a tune from his concert overture In the South (Alassio) as a setting for In Moonlight by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Near in date to his two symphonies and the violin concerto, in 1908–9, Elgar made a beautifully serene setting of one third of the long poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, A Child Asleep, subtly hinting in the ascending piano coda that the “sleep” of the child is actually its death. Two settings of Ben Jonson—Still to be neat and Modest and fair—were written for an unrealized opera, The Spanish Lady, from Elgar’s final years, and they end this fine recital in an upbeat mood.
On This Recording
- The Shepherd’s Song (2:44)a
- Queen Mary’s Song (3:39)a
- Is she not passing fair (2:43)b
- Rondel (1:40)b
- A Song of Autumn (2:49)c
- The Wind at Dawn (2:55)c
- Like to the Damask Rose (3:26)b
- Through the long days (2:01)b
- The Poet’s Life (3:12)b
- The Pipes of Pan (4:45)c
- In the Dawn (3:01)b
- Speak, Music! (2:54)a
- In Moonlight (2:17)a
- Pleading (2:50)a
- Oh, soft was the song (1:59)c
- Was it some Golden Star? (2:37)c
- Twilight (2:53)c
- The Torch (2:10)b
- The River (4:09)b
- A Child Asleep (3:27)a
- Arabian Serenade (2:15)c
- Still to be neat (1:43)c
- Modest and fair (1:35)c
Malcolm Martineau, piano
