Organ Sonata (Elgar) - Orchestration

Orchestration

In the 1940s, the decade after Elgar’s death, the publishers decided that an orchestration of the sonata should be commissioned, and having consulted the composer’s daughter and the conductor Sir Adrian Boult, they entrusted the job to Gordon Jacob. The orchestrated sonata was performed in 1946 (by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Boult). It was neglected for decades thereafter, being revived in 1988 in a recording by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Vernon Handley. The notes to that recording aver that ‘due to Jacob’s sympathetic scoring the version may be described as Elgar’s Symphony No 0,’ though this may be thought an optimistic claim, as for nearly twenty years after the recording was made it remained the only one in the catalogue, compared with four recordings of Anthony Payne’s elaboration of Elgar’s sketches for the Symphony No 3. In 2007 a second recording of the orchestrated sonata was issued by Chandos Records, with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales conducted by Richard Hickox. There exists another orchestration of the sonata made by John Morrison (born 1936, member of the Elgar Society), completed without being aware of the earlier work by Gordon Jacob.