For this recording, ABMC provided orchestral management, operations/logistics, and orchestral fixing. Additionally, this recording took part during the week-long Elgar Pilgrimage Festival in which the ESO performed 4 concerts, 4 separate programs, in 3 different cities, including the world premiere performance of the Elgar/Fraser. ABMC managed and fixed all of the live performances as well.
"Premier of the Year...This triumph of transcription deserves to be heard worldwide." Classical Music Magazine
"Four Stars...Fraser hasn’t just translated Elgar’s notes into rich and powerful orchestral terms, he has added the kind of touches of colour and splashes of figuration Elgar himself might well have introduced…on its own terms it’s beautifully realised, performed with warmth and understanding, and sympathetically recorded." BBC Music Magazine
"To my ears Fraser’s richly upholstered orchestration works a treat yet also manages to be astutely appreciative of the simmering passion and sense of loss that permeate this wistful creation…plaudits, too, for Woods’s characteristically lucid and fervent performance with his own English Symphony Orchestra" Gramophone
"Two of the most exciting events I have experienced during a reviewing career approaching half a century involve symphonies Elgar never wrote.
Anthony Payne's realisation of the incomplete sketches the dying Elgar left for a Third Symphony is the stuff of miracles, and now comes Donald Fraser's orchestration of the Piano Quintet." Birmingham Post (review of world premiere)
Behind-the-scenes look at the project.
Matthew Peters and Donald Fraser at the world premiere.
Birmingham Elgar Hall, 10 October 2015