First Pressing: Red Labels with "Half Moon Nipper", and Bold White "His Master's Voice" around it. HMV Logo top left of sleeve front cover is plain black outline, with EMI "Globe" Logo.
Later Pressings Have "Postage Stamp" Nipper logo on Red labels. Logo Top left on front of sleeve is the colourised nipper logo in red box.
Soloists: Jacqueline Du Pre (cello), Janet Baker (conrtalto).
Stereo.
Images
Number:923053 THUMBNAIL Uploaded By:Magic Marmalade Description: Edward Elgar - Cello Concerto / Sea Pictures - Front Cover
Number:923054 Uploaded By:Magic Marmalade Description: Edward Elgar - Cello Concerto / Sea Pictures - Back Cover (Signed By Jacqueline Du Pre ((WOOHOOO!!!!))
Number:923055 Uploaded By:Magic Marmalade Description: Edward Elgar - ASD 655 - Side 1 Label - Cello Concerto
Number:923056 Uploaded By:Magic Marmalade Description: Edward Elgar - ASD 655 - Side 2 Label - Sea Pictures
I've seen a few HMV red labels both online and "in the flesh" now for this, and other titles, and there is another variant which people ought to be aware of I think...
... It looks a lot like this one, but the "half moon Nipper (dog) logo takes up the entire upper portion of the label - right out to the edge of the label, with no border (that is, that the red area here containing the bold white "His Master's Voice" lettering is encompassed by the shaded half moon logo), and the text: "His Master's Voice" is inside this dark shaded area.
Having checked the matrices when I've found these, these would appear to be later than even the "Postage Stamp" labels (Themselves a little confusing*), and look "newer"... I think rather that these "large Half Moon Nipper's" are a later "Retro" design - If you follow me, whereby the postage stamp labels came after my above scanned label images, then they produced that label in order to evoke a more traditional, or nostalgic design.
So it's:
1: Red Half moon labels with thick red border and bold white lettering in (as per my scans) 2: Postage stamp labels (*some of the labels I've looked at have black and white Nipper logo in the postage stamp...and others with colourised logos (I don't know which of these is first, but I'd assume the colourised ones by virtue of production costs etc.) 3: Red labels with Large half moon Nipper logo (To label edges), no red border and smaller HMV text lettering inside this shaded logo.
...And finally: 4: A more recent reissue which has almost exact replicas of these first ones, except for a red EMI logo box inside the half moon, just above the centre hole.
(And of course, earlier issued titles came with the loverly White labels with Gold rim (red "Stereophonic" text across the label)... but this title was first issued too late for those ones)