Sir Edward ELGAR (1857-1934)
Symphony No. 2 in E flat major (1909-11) [54.44]
Sospiri for strings, harp and organ (1913-14) [3.50]
Elegy for Strings (1909) [4.14]
Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra/Sakari Oramo
rec. Stockholm Concert Hall, Sweden, June 2011 (Symphony; Sospiri);
August 2012 (Elegy).
BIS 
BIS-SACD-1879
[63.54]
“Rarely, rarely comest thou,
Spirit of Delight!...
Spirit false! thou hast forgot
All but those who need thee not.”
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
Elgar’s Second Symphony must have been covered so many times on
this site that it seems pointless me going over such old ground again
except to express a reminder of its many influences: Alice Stuart Wortley
and visits to Tintagel and Italy - especially Venice; the deaths of
his friend Alfred Rodewald and King Edward VII, the Empire and the sense
of its passing zenith. Those interested in a deeper look at this work
might like to follow this
link.
It is always interesting to hear an Elgar Symphony as read by a foreign
conductor. Such recordings are, thankfully, no longer rare as interest
in the composer spreads world-wide after years of neglect outside the
UK … and inside if I think about the period around the centenary
of the composer’s birth in 1957. Oramo’s reading impressed
me strongly laid over excellent BIS engineered sound.
The opening movement is propelled strongly, the Elgarian swagger is
exploited well and that ghostly passage suggesting a malign presence
in a garden seems particularly eerie here. The brass is biting and maybe
just a tad too forward for some tastes sounding like some bluff colonel,
but I don’t mind that at all. Contrastingly, Oramo also makes
this movement’s quieter more introspective moments really ‘heart-on-sleeve’
romantic and poetical. The Larghetto, with that funeral march, is dignified
and resplendent, the whole movement well-paced and terraced and with
soaring heartfelt passion. The Rondo third movement’s ‘migraine’
episode is suitably shattering and Oramo’s finale closely shadows
Elgar’s
nobilmente heroic mood and that lovely serenity
achieved at the end of this closing movement is quite exquisite here.
This serenity is maintained through Oramo’s glowing reading of
the delicate
Sospiri and the touching little
Elegy haunts.
Altogether a very impressive Elgar programme.
Ian Lace
Masterwork Index:
Elgar
symphony 2
