Republished from February 4 to add Andrew Keener’s review of this CRQ Editions Boult release, written for the April 2021 issue of the Elgar Society Journal, and reproduced here with Andrew’s permission

Elgar: Variations VIII & IX (Enigma Variations); Beethoven: Symphony no. 3 in E flat (Eroica)
London Symphony Orchestra/Sir Adrian Boult.
Recorded in February 1964 at Associated-Rediffusion Studio 5, Wembley
Classical Recordings Quarterly Editions CRQ DVD21

But for a producer’s diligence at Thames Television and the persistence of George Douglass in
obtaining the sole-surviving video tape for publication, this remarkable document, inexplicably never
transmitted, would not exist. It exudes a powerful Zeitgeist on several levels. First, it is a salutary
reminder of how classical music was presented on television in the 1960s (no frills, just musically
intelligent camerawork within the technological constraints of the time). Second, we are presented
with an all-male LSO in full concert dress in an equally formal-looking TV studio. And third – and
most important – here is the first President of the Elgar Society conducting for television a staple of
the German classics repertoire. The sound and monochrome picture quality are thoroughly
acceptable, the performance clearly unedited, at least within movements. I hope this will disarm any
reservations from Society members that Elgar occupies just 5’47” of the programme. The two
Enigma variations are conducted with affection and gravitas.

Reservations first. Cutaways of mountain streams and rolling hills abound in the Elgar (not a Malvern
Hill in sight – Yorkshire Dales?), and the C major episode of the Beethoven Funeral March and part of
the finale feature respectively a turbulent seascape and what appears to be the Scottish Highlands.
These absurdities aside, we are treated to an object lesson in unostentatious authority which should
be essential viewing for all student conductors. On the surface, no-one could seem to be doing less.
There is no gurning, no anguished facial miming of the music’s moods. The eloquence is all in the
point of the stick, also in those eyes, watchful, missing nothing. When, at moments of heightened
tension, a downbeat comes from behind the shoulder, the effect is galvanising (Boult told the young
Colin Davis that at such moments he was ‘throwing the juice over the orchestra’). It is a style of
conducting which has disappeared, the much-missed Vernon Handley offering the closest
resemblance in recent times. Not the only way to fire up an orchestra, of course, but unique and
powerful. There are three heartstopping close-up studies of Boult’s profile: shortly before the first
movement reprise, towards the end of the Funeral March and near the end of the Finale. Tempi are
generally more measured than we are used to these days, considerably down on Beethoven’s
metronome marks. Yet such is Boult’s sense of architecture that the third movement has a poise and
tension, the finale a strength and dignity. Nothing feels simply slow. The music breathes. There is no
first movement repeat, which I suspect would have disconcerted a conductor for whom repeats
were a structural sine qua non (I rather hope that such customs of the time would have similarly
irritated him in his two commercial recordings of the symphony in which the repeat is also omitted!).
The strings are seated in Boult’s preferred configuration: first and second violins opposite each
other, cellos next to the firsts, violas to the seconds. The double basses are arranged in a line at the
back. No better way, in the opinion of the present writer, to offer depth and presence to an
orchestral tutti.
Aficionados of bygone orchestral faces will have fun spotting LSO veterans such as Erich Gruenberg
(leading), principal oboist and clarinettist Roger Lord and Gervase de Peyer, cellist Denis Vigay and
principal double bass Stuart Knussen, father of Oliver. There is an absorbing short essay by
discographer Philip Stuart. An unmissable release.

Andrew Keener