ABSTRACT
There are many more interpreters of Elgar than some people think, and always were. Even if this article had been written twenty years ago, before the wider renewal of interest in his music had gained full momentum, readers might have been surprised by the number and variety of musicians who performed the works of a composer who many of his fellow-countrymen had come to believe had a narrow and limited appeal. Today the number of conductors alone who have explored his works constitutes a formidable array: not merely the third generation of British conductors: Del Mar, Groves, Handley, Davis, Gibson, Rattle, Loughran, Hickox, Mackerras, Thomson, Marriner, but their contemporaries from abroad. Thus, in the past decade, major Elgar works have been conducted (and in many cases recorded) by Solti, Barenboim, Haitink, Sinopoli, Bernstein, Dorati, Svetlanov, Kasprzyk, Rozhdestvensky, Jochum, Previn, Mehta, Ormandy, Stokowski and many others. There are outstanding omissions in this list which tell their own story, most notably Karajan and Giulini.
