"BEST CHORAL CD OF 2005" - CRC HISTORIC AWARDS
Judges' remarks: "Elijah is a particularly inspired issue... meeting all the criteria for an award."

CLASSIC RECORD COLLECTOR:
Elijah was one of the great warhorses of the amateur choral movement during the previous two centuries, and Columbia’s decision to make a more or less complete recording in 1930 reflected the combination of commercial acumen and artistic good sense that marked out this company from its rivals. The set was issued on 15 ten-inch discs, so that purchasers could opt for their own individual selections from the great work; and, as the excellent notes accompanying this reissue observe, it remained in the catalogue until 1948, a remarkably long time for a recording from the early days of the electrical era.

Columbia engaged 26-year-old Stanford Robinson to lead the proceedings, which he did with much flair. By 1930, Robinson had already been with the BBC for six years, and he was to remain with it until 1966. Throughout this recording he demonstrates complete command of the work’s idiom; he leads the great choruses with tremendous energy and secures a distinguished contribution from the anonymous orchestra, probably the forerunner of the about-to-be-formed BBC SO. The soloists all make a strong impression. In the title role Harold Williams offers an appropriately magisterial performance, which is finely matched by the radiant soprano of Isobel Baillie and the eloquent tenor of Parry Jones, as well as the rich contralto of Clara Serena.

What especially distinguishes this first reissue in any longplaying format is the astoundingly good quality of the transfers by Andrew Rose of Pristine Sound [sic]. He has successfully managed to do away with the aural “murk” which characterises so many recordings from this period, to reveal a clear and relatively well balanced aural picture. The notes are informative. If Divine Art’s new Historic Sound label is able to maintain these first rate standards of production and repertoire, its future publications will be well worth acquiring, as is certainly the case with this excellent release.
David Patmore

NEW CLASSICS:
Felix Mendelssohn was born in Hamburg in 1809 and began learning piano at an early age, giving his first  recital at nine and beginning to compose at ten. By the time he was fifteen he had written several string symphonies, piano pieces and songs, as well as an opera. He first performed his most famous oratorio, Elijah, in 1846 at the Birmingham Music Festival. This double CD features the first complete recording of that choral masterwork, made in London in 1930 for the Columbia label. It features Stanford Robinson conducting the BBC National Chorus and Orchestra, and the top class soloists include soprano Isobel Baillie, tenor Parry Jones, Australian-born baritone Harold Williams (singing the title role) and alto Clara Serena. Also featured are organist Berkeley Mason and The Wireless Singers, an ensemble that would later evolve into the BBC Singers. Although seventy-five years old, these mono recordings have been digitally remastered to reveal a thrilling  performance of this great dramatic work.
John Pitt

THE GRAMOPHONE:
A performance from the distant past that thoroughly deserves its disinterment.

This, the first-ever recording of Mendelssohn’s oratorio, has always seemed to me one of the most convincing. Like the great Philips/Sawallisch set of the 1960s, it is one of the few to employ a small professional chorus, much preferable to the overblown sound of a larger group. They sing with promptness and gusto under the keen baton of Stanford Robinson, a much underrated conductor. He never lingers, and thus gives the work the dramatic verve that it calls for. A nascent BBC Symphony Orchestra plays with vigour and sensitivity as and when the score requires. The Wireless Singers, later to become the BBC Singers, are assigned those numbers the composer gave to a smaller group, but are too often given to the main chorus.

The cast is headed by Harold Williams’s incomparable Elijah. He repeated the part under Sargent in the Columbia set of 1947 with just as much authority as here. Nobody, in English versions at any rate, sings the part with such a rightful combination of despair, anger and inner sincerity - just what it calls for, In vocal terms he is secure and strong from top to bottom of his voice, and his enunciation of the text is second to none.

Isobel Baillie sings with her customary purity and feeling, and is in better voice than in 1947. Her ‘Hear ye, Israel’ is one of the best on disc. Parry Jones, though he never possessed the most lovely of sounds, is an eloquent, secure Obadiah, especially fine in ‘Then shall the righteous shine’. Clara Serena’s fruity contralto is from another age, but she sensibly never sentimentalises her two solos, as many of her coevals used to.

Drawbacks? There are few minor cuts; in a couple of numbers an organ takes the place of the orchestra; and the recording is obviously not of 21st-century standard, but in its caring transfer by Divine Art it sounds remarkably fresh. Now the reading is on CD I shall return to it often. Besides, it is selling at £8.50 for the two disc, making it well worthy of investigation.
Alan Blyth

MUSICWEB:
Full marks to The Divine Art for digging out and dusting down this 1930 Elijah. There are cuts, it’s true, the majority in the second part but the words "substantially intact" certainly cover it and the exigencies were doubtless necessary at the time. The recording, made on 10" discs not 12", stayed in the catalogues for the better part of two decades until it was pensioned off in favour of the new Columbia album directed by Malcolm Sargent. Indeed whilst that recording has garnered great praise over the years and reissues – rightly so – this earlier set, conducted by the young Stanford Robinson, has been pretty well entirely obscured. Obscured and also confused, because the two principals, Harold Williams and Isobel Baillie reprised their roles seventeen years later for Sargent. Many may be unaware of their earlier contributions to the 1930 recording.

It’s a feature of Elijahs that the best were invariably Australian. Elgar always maintained that Horace Stevens was the greatest he’d ever heard but Harold Williams must have run Stevens close. In the early post-War recording he is in even greater form, utterly commanding, fiery and sympathetic, an assumption both noble and deeply human. But his earlier recording finds him only slightly less exalted. His recitatives are commanding and perfectly judged, Lord God of Abraham taken with great understanding and vocal colour and It Is Enough finds him contrasting a hollow expressivity with a central section of hardened determination where the resignation and dynamism are held in perfect equipoise.

Isobel Baillie is heard in youthful voice but then, when wasn’t her voice youthful and fresh? It’s a relative matter with Baillie and I can’t decide which of her performances, the 1930 or the 1947 I prefer; fortunately we have both. Her crystalline, dead-centre-of-the-note purity, with limited vibrato but compelling musicianship is audible throughout. She’s superb in duets, whether with Williams or the other Australian cast member - half the great singers in England before the War were Australian - Clara Serena. Baillie’s standouts are Hear ye, Israel and the perfectly posed blending of voices with her other principals. Serena, an alto, has a voice that is capable of some plangency but also relative lightness. It’s certainly not at all marmoreal and is a decided asset here – try her Part One aria For He shall give him Angels.

Parry Jones is the tenor, Obadiah, and he makes a real impression. He wasn’t a lyric tenor in the Nash mould or a heldentenor à la Widdop but he had something of Tudor Davies’ passion whilst exercising greater control over material. His If With All Your Hearts is done with real vibrancy and incision but also great musicality. The little known Tom Purvis also impresses in his short contributions. The orchestra is anonymous but doesn’t sound like a generic pick-up band at all. In fact for London in 1930 it’s pretty good, and the fiddles, whilst not sounding numerous, are well drilled and in the main abjure portamenti. The Wireless Singers were one of the leading choirs in the country; a select group they belie the English Oratorio Tradition of massed Henry Wood thousands and sing with considerable nuance and commendable control. Robinson shows, even in this somewhat abbreviated fashion, just what a dependable and adept conductor he was. If some speeds seem on the frisky side that may be a feature of the 10" side lengths – but it’s also no bad thing to hear Elijah chug along this fluently.

Engineer Andrew Rose outlines some of the difficulties he encountered in the transfer and the solutions he adopted to minimise them. I don’t have the original 78 set nor do I have any subsequent re-issue (if there has been one) of parts of them on LP; an EMI LP included part of Parry Jones’ contribution in a tribute album. What I do hear is a degree of shellac crackle on some sides but uncompromised upper frequencies; an open sound that preserves treble but which extracts some of the real dynamism embedded in the 1930 grooves and moreover captures the spectrum. It makes listening enjoyable and shows what Columbia engineers of that period could do. So, with biographical details and texts and a sure sense of style, I’d recommend this retrieval with pleasure. Add it to the Sargent and you’ll have a fruitful and complementary look at a special lineage in Elijah singing and playing. And above all else, above even Baillie, you’ll have a double dose of Williams, a magnificent colossus of an Elijah.
Jonathan Woolf

AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE:
Mendelssohn’s Elijah, first performed in London in 1846, became a cornerstone of the choral repertoire in Victorian Britain, even to rivalling the great Handel. So popular was it that a recording as a prime desideratum, and the feat was accomplished in April 1930, when the oratorio was released by Columbia on 15 10-inch sides. While I am no authority in such matters, the BBC performers sound like what I imagine the Victorian tradition must have been, scaled down somewhat for the recording studio and with some minor cuts to accommodate disc spacing. The singers have the English timbre and enunciate in such a way as to be understood verbally as well as musically. While a printed text is included, it is hardly necessary, not least because this discographic rarity has been restored with considerable care. What pleased before will please again in this moving and dramatic performance.
Radcliffe

INTERNATIONAL RECORD REVIEW:
Mendelssohn, who did much to revive interest in Bach, died in Leipzig a century before Ramin’s endeavours there [Ramin was a great Bach scholar]. His greatest choral work, Elijah, received its first “complete” recording (some cuts) on Columbia in 1930. It has been transferred by Divine Art at two discs for the price of one. The BBC National Chorus and an anonymous orchestra conducted by Stanford Robinson join Isobel Baillie, Harold Williams (both of whom recorded the work under Malcolm Sargent in 1947), Clara Serena and Parry Jones.

Williams is a magnificent prophet. From Elijah’s scene with Ahab, when he challenges the priests of Baal, one knows one is in the presence of a powerful figure: actually two: Elijah and Williams. (In “Baal, we cry to thee”, Mendelssohn has given Elijah’s foes one of the best choruses). How firmly Williams sings “Lord God of Abraham”, while “Is not His Word” finds him histrionically exciting and technically accomplished. He gives a tremendous performance of the role. His fellow Australian Clara Serena exhibits little sign of vibrato in her contralto. Hearing her in this set I am surprised that she sang Anneris and Erda at Covent Garden. She’s rather bland and seems afraid to allow her voice its full flow. Baillie is, as always, fresh-toned, with pin-point attack. Not the most mellifluous of Welsh tenors, Jones matches Williams in responsiveness, though his partiality to the rolled “r” (“garrrments”) is too much for me. This is possibly his best contribution to the gramophone.

The well-trained chorus is a positive factor, vital and dramatic, as is Robinson’s conducting. Has some reverberation been added, unnecessarily, in the transfer? I am pleased to have had the opportunity to hear this set.
John T. Hughes

CULTURE MAGAZINE:
From 1930, the first complete recording of Mendelssohn’s oratorio Elijah comes up surprisingly cleanly in this 2-CD version. Soloists include the pure-voiced soprano Isobel Baillie among top singers of the day in a dramatically paced reading.
Tom Hall