Composers: Elgar, Chadwick
Compositions: Falstaff, Tam O’Shanter
Performers: BBC Welsh Orchestra/Constantine
Catalogue Number: Orchid ORC100103

This is the weirdest “concept” album I’ve ever encountered. The notion of recording Elgar’s unjustly neglected symphonic poem Falstaff with interpolations from both parts of Henry IV (intoned here by father and son Sir Timothy West as Falstaff and Samuel West as Prince Hal) works, up to a point, but it’s hardly destined for repeated listening. That said, there is a conventional uninterrupted version as well, and excellent it is.