Search - Edward Elgar, Georg Solti, London Philharmonic Orchestra :: Elgar: Symphonies 1 & 2

More authentic than native Britons?

Paul Bubny | Maplewood, NJ United States | 12/03/2002

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Elgar's two symphonies tend to be discursive and soft-grained--at least the way they're frequently performed. Sir Georg Solti (a Hungarian knighted for, among other things, his tenure as director of the Royal Opera at Covent Garden) is not the first man who would have come to mind as a natural successor to Adrian Boult or John Barbirolli as far as Elgar's music is concerned, but in fact he gives Elgar's two completed symphonies (a Third Symphony exists only in sketches, which were filled out and orchestrated by Anthony Payne a few years ago) a welcome shot of adrenaline. The blunt, clipped phrasing and fast tempi in these recordings have a clear precedent in Elgar's own performances. As a result, the music has a ruddy glow to its cheeks and strides forward with a sense of purpose. I would say, however, that the Second Symphony gets the more deeply considered interpretation here (despite its being better known and more frequently heard than the First Symphony, the Second is not necessarily the finer piece); the First is just a tad superficial in Solti's hands, although the London Philharmonic give their best in both symphonies (and the two overtures which fill out this bargain-priced set)."

To add to the other review

s_molman | CT United States | 01/20/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I agree with the review below and would add that it seems these recordings tend to be enjoyed more by people who didn't think they liked Elgar more than hard-core Elgarians, at least that has been my experience. I never thought I liked these works until I heard this set. So I would recommend to anyone who is in that position to give it a shot."

Glorious Elgar

Johannes Climacus | Beverly, Massachusetts | 09/26/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"If you have ever regarded Elgar's music as insufferably pompous or stuffy, then Solti is the man to convince you otherwise. Solti's exuberant, life-affirming, intensely dramatic and ripely romantic Elgar blows all the cobwebs away, and will often remind you of Richard Strauss when tempos are brisk and Mahler when they are slow. And why not? Elgar was an exact contemporary of Strauss, and his career overlapped substantially with Mahler's. He knew and appreciated music from the Continent, and in many ways sought to transplant such late Romantic idioms onto British soil. The odd conclusion is that this doyen of Imperial Britain does not in truth sound particularly "English" (if by that term one means a certain predilection for folksy bonhomie, pastoral evocation, and high Anglican austerity). Indeed, Elgar was not an Anglican, but a Roman Catholic, and for this reason alone stood outside of the English mainstream.



But I digress. The main point is that Solti draws thrillingly robust playing from the LPO in all four works contained in the double-CD package. If Solti's emphasis on action-packed heroism in *Cockaigne* is ultimately too much of a good thing--reminding the listener at times of a soundtrack to an Indiana Jones movie--then at least he does justice to the work's dramatic impetus. And, let's face it, there is a sufficient tincture of corniness mingled with the nobilamente in this work (and also--gulp!--in the finale of Second Symphony) to remind us that Elgar, for all his brilliance, is not quite in the same league as Mahler.



Solti's renditions of the two symphonies are explicitly modeled after the composer's own, and that means a refreshingly brisk approach and a highly charged atmosphere in which moods come and go chimerically, while pathos never descends into sentimentality. The two slow movements are particularly affecting here, and the finales of both symphonies are nothing short of glorious (rambustious though they seem at Solti's upbeat tempos). The very opening of the First Symphony could do with a greater sense of mystery (it's one of the few genuinely Brucknerian moments in Elgar and should be treated as such--Solti misses the boat here), and the ghostly, malign passages in the first movement of the Second Symphony should not be quite so forthright (subtlety wasn't Solti's strongest suit at this stage of his career). Perhaps the most effective movement of all is Second Symphony's scherzo, where Solti's incendiary vitality seems to ignite the orchestra, with predictably scintillating results.



*In the South* is perhaps marginally less convincing than the other works presented here: the piece is, frankly, rather episodic, and needs more TLC than Solti is willing to give it. On the other hand, Solti is in his element in its bitingly dissonant passages, which have rarely sounded quite so modernistic.



This economical set represents quite possibly the best introduction to Elgar's music (beyond "Enigma" and the "Pomp and Circumstance" Marches) for those listeners who have, for whatever reason, resisted this most elusive and ambiguous of modern British composers. Even if, in the end, you still find Elgar intractable, Solti's performances deserve your attention if only as examples of orchestral and conductorial virtuosity at their most stunning. The recordings sound as astonishingly vivid as the day they were made. The Decca engineers outdid themselves here, and the remasterings have done nothing to undermine their achievement.



Not to be missed on any account."