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Background: Elgar spent the last years of his life in semi-retirement, 'a sad and broken man'. However, in 1930, a commission to write a test-piece for a national brass band competition rekindled his interest in composition and led to a commission by the BBC in 1932 for a Third Symphony. Elgar made extensive sketches for it, but at his death in February 1934 the Symphony consisted of only a few pages of full score, a mass of apparently incoherent sketches and a request that 'no-one must tinker with it'. Nonetheless, in 1995, in a BBC radio programme about the symphony which aroused much interest, Anthony Payne, the distinguished composer and writer, combined most of the sketches to present the raw material for the symphony and to suggest what Elgar might have made of it. Subsequently the Elgar family commissioned Payne to make a full-scale performing version from the sketches. The result is unmistakably Elgarian in character. The first public performance at the Royal Festival Hall in 1998 was hailed as one of the musical events of the decade and brought a standing ovation for Payne.

The companion works on this Elgar SA-CD also involve significant contributions by Anthony Payne. The first, So Many True Princesses Who Have Gone, was written in 1932, when Elgar was Master of the King’s Music, for performance by chorus and military band at the unveiling of a monument dedicated to the late Queen Alexandra. The original accompaniment for band has been lost, but Anthony Payne has orchestrated the surviving piano reduction of the vocal score and produced a beautiful and dignified version for concert performance. The second is Pomp and Circumstance March No.6. When Elgar embarked on his series of Pomp and Circumstance Marches in 1901, he planned a set of six. He completed five but the existence of sketches for a sixth did not come to light until 1996. In 2005, the Elgar Will Trust asked Anthony Payne to review the sketches with a view to assembling and orchestrating a performing version, and this was then performed at the BBC Proms in 2006. The work is here recorded for the first time.

CATALOGUE NR: CHSA5057
RECORD LABEL: Chandos
FORMAT: Hybrid SACD
PRICE: £ 12.95 including VAT, or £ 11.02 excluding VAT
RELEASE DATE: 29-Oct-2007

COMPOSER: Edward Elgar
TRACKS: Symphony No.3 (elab. and orch. by Anthony Payne). Pomp and Circumstance March No.6 (compl. and orch. by Anthony Payne). So Many True Princesses Who Have Gone (orch. by Anthony Payne).
ORCHESTRA: BBC National Orchestra of Wales
CONDUCTOR: Richard Hickox
ARTISTS: Adrian Partington Singers      

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