A NEW CD of rarely heard music by Edward Elgar has leapt into the top ten of the Classical CD chart eighty years after he died.
The new record called Elgar’s Music for the Powick Asylum contains music composed by Elgar in the late 1870s and early 1880s when he was a young struggling musician playing in and around Worcester.
At that time the enlightened management at what was then called, the County and City of Worcester Pauper Lunatic Asylum, at Powick appointed Elgar to conduct and compose for the staff band.
This new recording is by the Innovation Chamber Ensemble conducted by Barry Collett and is on the Somm Record Label, one of the leading independent classical music labels, and Somm chose The Elgar Birthplace Museum as the venue for their CD launch night last week.
Sir Edward Elgar died on February 23, 1934 in Worcester at the age of seventy-six and was buried next to his wife at St. Wulstan’s Church in Little Malvern.
Chris Bennett, museum supervisor at The Elgar Birthplace Museum, said: “We were delighted to have been chosen as the venue for such a prestigious event.
“But I suppose we were the obvious choice.
“Elgar was Worcestershire through and through, and this music was composed specifically to be performed in Worcestershire by a Worcestershire orchestra.
“What’s more, we have Elgar’s original manuscripts of the music here at The Elgar Birthplace Museum.
“This is the very first professional recording of this music, and some of it has never been recorded at all. It is music to put a smile on your face, as thousands of people are now discovering.”
