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The Elgar Complete Edition is published by Elgar Works, a Company limited by Guarantee (Registration Number: 06040208). The board of Elgar Works comprises:
- Frank Beck is the Complete Edition's Sales Director and is also the Board's North American representative, being based in New York.
- Steven Halls became Chairman of Elgar Society Edition Ltd, the previous publisher of the Complete Edition, in November 2007 and of Elgar Works in October 2008. In June 2008, he was also elected Chairman of the Elgar Society. Having studied Modern Languages at Oxford
University, he subsequently gained a PhD in German and Music, an MBA, and an M.Phil in
politics. Having been professionally involved in music promotion in the North of England and
the Midlands from 1976, he has followed a career in local government from 1987, becoming
Chief Executive of Three Rivers District Council, based in Rickmansworth, Herts in 2003.
One of Steven's passions is for chamber music, both as listener and performer. From 1970
to 1979 he studied the 'cello with Pauline Dunn in Harrogate and Suzanne Ramon in Paris, and
since 1999 has been directing, and performing in, chamber music series in the Midlands. In 2016 he resurrected Three Rivers Music Society, becomning its programme director.
- John Norris, the Complete Edition's General Manager since 2003 and a member of the Elgar Society for thirty years, first became actively involved in the
promotion of Elgar's music in 1996 when he developed the elgar.org website. This led in 1999
to his formation and subsequent running of Elgar Enterprises, the Society's trading arm, and
Elgar Editions, its publishing imprint and recording label. He became a member of the Society's
Executive in 2000 as Commercial Development Officer, and in 2003 took early retirement from
a career as a Civil Servant to enable him to devote more time to his Elgar interests. In 2006, he
relinquished his Elgar Society responsibilities to become Chairman of Elgar Foundation
Enterprises, the trading arm of the Elgar Birthplace Museum, until its takeover by the National Trust in 2016, and also to form Elgar Works.
- John Pickard, the first co-General Editor, is Professor of Composition and Applied Musicology at the University of Bristol and is a noted composer. In the latter role, he is best known for a series of powerful orchestral and instrumental works including four symphonies and a number of other orchestral works of symphonic dimensions. The Flight of Icarus, a BBC commission first performed in 1991 by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and repeated by them at the 1996 BBC Proms, has recently been released on CD by BIS records in a recording project of John's orchestral music with the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra. He is also noted for his commitment to the brass band movement, serving as Composer-in-Residence to the renowned 'Buy as you
View' Cory Band, from 2001 until 2004 and composing the test piece for the finals of the 2005
National Brass Band Championship. John also lectures extensively, notably on Elgar's music.
- In view of John's increasing professional commitments, in 2016 the board appointed a second co-General Editor: Iain Farrington. Iain is an exceptionally versatile musician - composer and arranger; organist, repetiteur and a phenomenal solo pianist. Many will have seen him in the opening ceremony for the London Olympics where he performed Chariots of Fire to an accompaniment from Mr Bean; he also has numerous Proms appearances and recordings to his name, and he comes with a strong recommendation from Sir Simon Rattle. Yet alongside his aim to bring live music to as wide an audience as possible, Iain has also built a broadly-based reputation as a music editor. He brings to the role of co-General Editor a portfolio of talents which will serve not only the editorial side of the Complete Edition well but also the wider charity as it faces up to the challenges of the electronic age.
- Paul Adrian Rooke is the Edition's Chief Originator. He has pursued a multi-faceted musical career since his retirement from the teaching profession in
2003. The conductor of the Hitchin Symphony Orchestra since 1985 and more recently of the
Stevenage Male Voice Choir, Paul has two symphonies and a number of other significant
compositions to his credit. In 2007, he produced performing editions of two Polonaises and three
movements for piano trio left incomplete by Elgar and published in the Appendices to Vols.37
and 38 of the Complete Edition. In 2006, with John Norris, he was instrumental in the formation
of ElgarWorks, an organisation which provides practical support to those wishing to
put on performances of Elgar's lesser-known works, primarily through the provision of orchestral
scores and instrumental parts derived from full scores published in the Complete Edition.
- Ann Vernau has been a member of the Elgar Society for thirty years and edited the Society's News from 2002 until 2007, when she became the Company
Secretary of both Elgar Society Edition Ltd and Elgar Works. Away from the world of
Elgar, she has served as a magistrate, and is Company Secretary of Three Rivers Museum Trust and
Hon.Secretary of the Rickmansworth Historical Society.
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