Perhaps the problem lies in the idea that composers can be ranked like tennis players, leading us to zany lists by Classic FM and the like that would rank Florence Price above these and most others.
A very few composers, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, seem universally accepted as of the first rank. Looked at this way, neither Stanford nor Elgar was in the first rank, so in order to differentiate between them (and the likes of Brahms, Bruckner, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov and numerous others) we need to invent a second rank, a third rank, a fourth rank, with maybe a second plus, a first minus, all very amusing to work out and maybe for some a more entertaining pastime than listening to the music.
And then, fist/second rank in what? If we allow that Elgar wrote better symphonies than Stanford, what about partsongs or motets? Can you find a partsong by Elgar that stops time like Stanford's Blue Bird or The Haven, or a motet like Justorum Animae? This brings us to another form of ranking, one that assumes a symphony to be of itself a higher form of endeavour than a partsong or a motet. I'm not sure this is so. Nor is it only a matter of small forms versus larger ones. Judge Stanford on his string quartets and you find a higher-ranking (here we go again) master than with the symphonies.
Another issue is transportability. Try as people will, Elgar has limited appeal even in Nordic countries and virtually none in Latin ones. And you cannot say, as you once could, that this is because they haven't heard the music. As for Stanford, they haven't had much chance recently. In his own day, his music travelled more readily than Elgar's, but times and conditions have changed, I'm not saying this could be repeated today